Section: 2E2 - Asceticism.
Number of quotes: 274
Ancient Rome: In The Light Of Recent Discoveries (1888)
Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani
Book ID: 18 Page: 176
Section: 2E2
One thing is absolutely certain: when the gates of the Atrium were thrown open to public curiosity, and the crowd entered the cloisters (confiscated as the property of state) and stepped over the threshold which no man had crossed before without danger of death, no damage whatever was committed, no injury done either to the building or to its artistic treasures.
Quote ID: 354
Time Periods: 4
Apostasy that Wasn’t, The: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church
Rod Bennett
Book ID: 561 Page: 43
Section: 2E2
In Antony, the early Church was born again.
Quote ID: 9231
Time Periods: 2
Apostasy that Wasn’t, The: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church
Rod Bennett
Book ID: 561 Page: 43
Section: 2E2
While the city Christians normalized their own decayed state of affairs, speculating idly that miracles had ceased with the death of the last apostle, Antony’s boys were filled with the Holy Spirit, who confirmed their mission with signs and wonders. Demons were cast out, lepers were cleansed, the lame made to walk, the blind made to see.
Quote ID: 9232
Time Periods: 2
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 64
Section: 2E2
I would, rather, spend the remainder of the chapter looking at him less in terms of the clear, beneficial role allotted to him by his late antique biographers, but, rather, from a greater distance, as a figure who, in many regions, acted as a facilitator in the transition from paganism to Christianity.
Quote ID: 714
Time Periods: ?
Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568
Guy Halsall
Book ID: 36 Page: 101
Section: 2E2
Nevertheless, other currents in Christian thinking parted company with their pagan predecessors. These stressed the extremes of ascetic self-denial, virginity and renunciation of family ties. {129} This competitive approach to asceticism had little to do with the traditional Roman virtues of moderation and presented an alternative model of behaviour for men and women.
Quote ID: 741
Time Periods: 34
Birth of Europe, The
Jacques Le Goff
Book ID: 199 Page: 24
Section: 2E2,4B
Monastic life deeply influenced European mores. It taught Christian society to organize its use of time. By both day and night, the monks themselves would gather together at regular intervals and at special times (the eight monastic or canonical hours) to recite prayers. From the monks, Christians also learned to pay attention to their regimen.
Quote ID: 4496
Time Periods: 345
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 657
Section: 2E2
About 275 an Egyptian monk, Anthony, began a quarter century of isolated existence first in a tomb, then in an abandoned mountain castle, then in a rock-hewn desert cell. There he struggled nightly with frightful visions and pleasant dreams, and overcame them all; until at last his reputation for sanctity filled all Christendom, and peopled the desert with emulating eremites. In 325 Pachomius, feeling that solitude was selfishness, gathered anchorites into an abbey at Tabenne in Egypt, and founded that cenobitic, or community, monasticism which was to have its most influential development in the West. The Church opposed the monastic movement for a time, and then accepted it as a necessary balance to its increasing preoccupation with government.
Quote ID: 947
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 163
Section: 2E2
At the same time, interest in monasticism exploded.
Quote ID: 1026
Time Periods: 23
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 164
Section: 2E2
St Anthony, “the first monk”, though hermits existed prior to him.
Quote ID: 1027
Time Periods: 34
Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical
Frank C. Senn
Book ID: 54 Page: 198
Section: 2E2
The Gallican-Celtic monastic rules claim a spiritual lineage that goes back to the desert fathers of Egypt, as communicated to Western Christians through John Cassian. He is thought to have been born around 360 in Scythia Minor (present-day Romania) near the delta of the Danube. He went to Egypt as a young monk and encountered hermetic monasticism, possibly including the Rule of Pachomius to which he refers in the Preface to his Institutes. In this famous and influential work, written between 417 and 425, Cassian is not giving a history of Egyptian monasticism, but is drawing on his memory of it to reform and establish on a sounder basis Gallican monasticism.
Quote ID: 1224
Time Periods: 345
Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical
Frank C. Senn
Book ID: 54 Page: 199
Section: 2E2
Cassian’s little history is intended to prove that monks are traditional Christians, perhaps because there were still plenty of vocal critics of monasticism in the Western church. But he also wanted to show that monasticism was, by the fifth century, a long-established tradition in the East. The Gauls wish to have monks; but they do not know how to be monks. All they need to do is to conform to a long-established and well-tested manner of ascetic life that has nothing in it of novelty.Yet here lay the first of Cassian’s difficulties. To imitate Egypt invited trouble in Gaul. The climate of Provence and the character of its people prevented the austere life that prevailed in Egypt. For Cassian, Egypt was heaven on earth; but he must temper Egyptian practices where they are unsuitable with customs from less rigorous sources. As he wrote in the introduction to the Institutes,
I do not believe that any way of life, that might newly be designed in Gaul, could be better or more reasonable than the institutes which began in the age of the apostles and have been kept in the monasteries of Egypt and Palestine to this day. But I shall take this liberty: that if I think anything in the rules of Egypt are by climate or by difference of habits impossible or hard in this country, I shall temper the Egyptian customs by those of Palestine and Mesopotamia.
Quote ID: 1225
Time Periods: 45
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 8
Section: 2E2
For example, ancient Isaics “possessed a moral system purer, more elevated than that of classical Roman religion. Who did not feel his soul shaken with feelings of admiration as he watched those votaries of Isis plunge thrice into the frozen Tiber and, shivering cold, creep about the temple?” But some non-Christian spectators saw it instead as madness; indeed, so did some Christians, before Saint Anthony had established new modes of worship.
Quote ID: 1405
Time Periods: 123
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 62
Section: 2E2,2E6
Occasionally the bargain was explicit: acknowledge God or be punished. So an ascetic of Hermoupolis in Egypt reduces a procession of non-Christian worshipers to frozen immobility, right in the middle of the road, through spells; and they cannot regain the use of their limbs until they “renounce their error.”
Quote ID: 1461
Time Periods: 234
Chrysostom, An Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children
Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople
Book ID: 12 Page: 7
Section: 4B,2E2
14. There is but one kind of place that is shameful, I mean the possession of great wealth, and that is shameful indeed.
Quote ID: 210
Time Periods: 4
Chrysostom, An Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children
Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople
Book ID: 12 Page: 8
Section: 4B,2E2
17. …no one takes thought for his children, no one discourses to them about virginity and sobriety or about contempt of wealth and fame, or of the precepts laid down in the Scriptures.
Quote ID: 211
Time Periods: 4
Chrysostom, An Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children
Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople
Book ID: 12 Page: 19
Section: 2E2
56. Here strict laws are needed, the first being: Never send thy son to the theater that he may not suffer utter corruption through his ears and eyes. And when he is abroad in the open squares, his attendant must be especially watchful as he passes through the alleys and must warn the boy of this, so that he may never suffer this corruption.57. That he may not suffer it by his own appearance must have our careful thought. We must remove the chief part of his physical charm by clipping the locks on his head all round to attain sever simplicity. If the boy complain because he is being deprived of this charm, let him learn first of all that the greatest charm is simplicity.
Quote ID: 213
Time Periods: 4
Chrysostom, An Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children
Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople
Book ID: 12 Page: 24
Section: 2E2
79. Well then, as I said before, never allow any maid to approach him or to serve him, save it be a slave of advancing years, an old woman. And let us guide the conversation to the kingdom of Heaven and to those men of old, pagan or Christian, who were illustrious for their self-restraint.{42} Let us constantly flood his ears with talk of them. If we should also have servants of sober conduct, let us draw comparisons also from them, saying how absurd to have so sober a servant, while the free man is inferior to him in conduct. There is another remedy yet. Which is that? Let him also learn to fast, not indeed all the while, but on two days of the week, on Wednesday and Friday.{43}
Quote ID: 215
Time Periods: 45
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 291
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s Salvation“Sell what belongs to thee.”{b} And what is this? It is not what some hastily take it to be, a command to fling away the substance that belongs to him and to part with his riches, but to banish from the soul its opinions about riches, its attachment to them, its excessive desire, its morbid excitement over them, its anxious cares, the thorns of our earthly existence with choke the seed of the true life.{a} For it is no great or enviable thing to be simply without riches, apart from the purpose of obtaining life. Why, if this were so, those men who have nothing at all, but are destitute and beg for their daily bread, who lie along the roads in abject poverty, would, though “ignorant” of God and “God’s righteousness,”{b} be most blessed and beloved of God and the only possessors of eternal life, by the sole fact of their being utterly without ways and means of livelihood and in want of the smallest necessities. Nor again is it a new thing to renounce wealth and give it freely to the poor, or to one’s fatherland, which many have done before the Saviour’s coming, some to obtain leisure for letters and for dead wisdom, others for empty fame and vainglory- such men as Anaxagoras, Democritus and Crates.{c}
Quote ID: 3036
Time Periods: 023
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 295
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s SalvationThe men of former days, indeed, in their contempt for outward things, parted with and sacrificed their possessions, but as for the passions of the soul, I think they even intensified them. For they became supercilious, boastful, conceited and disdainful of the rest of mankind, as if they themselves had wrought something superhuman.
Quote ID: 3038
Time Periods: 345
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 297
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s SalvationHow could we feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, cover the naked and entertain the homeless, with regard to which deeds He threatens fire and outer darkness to those who have not done them,{e} if each of us were himself already in want of all these things? But further, the lord Himself is a guest with Zacchaeus{d} and Levi and Matthew,{e} wealthy men and tax-gatherers, and He does not bid them give up their riches.
Quote ID: 3039
Time Periods: 1
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 299
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s SalvationAn instrument, if you use it with artistic skill, is a thing of art; but if you are lacking in skill, it reaps the benefit of your unmusical nature, though not itself responsible. Wealth too is an instrument of the same kind. You can see it rightly; it ministers to righteousness. But if one use it wrongly, it is found to be a minster of wrong. For its nature is to minister, not to rule. We must not therefore put the responsibility on that which, having in itself neither good nor evil, is not responsible, but on that which has the power of using things either well or badly, as a result of choice; for this is responsible just for that reason. And this is the mind of man, which has in itself both free judgment and full liberty to deal with what is given to it. So let a man do away, not with his possessions, but rather with the passions of his soul, which do not consent to the better use of what he has...
Quote ID: 3040
Time Periods: 23
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 307
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s SalvationStrength and greatness of body do not give life, nor does insignificance of the limbs destroy, but the soul by its use of these provides the cause that leads to either result. Accordingly the scripture says, “When thou art struck, offer thy face,”{c} which a man can obey even though he is strong and in good health; whereas one who is weakly can transgress through an uncontrolled temper. Thus a man without means of livelihood might perchance be found drunk with lusts, and one rich in possessions sober and poor as regards pleasures, believing, prudent, pure, disciplined.
Quote ID: 3042
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 192
Section: 2E2
He writes scathingly of the wandering, abusive preacher Peregrinus, …. whose morbid craving for notoriety impelled him to throw himself in the fire at the Olympic Games (AD 165) . . .
Quote ID: 4749
Time Periods: 2
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 220
Section: 2E2
The earliest known Christian hermit (anchorite), Narcissus in the second century AD, went into retreat to escape from slander; ….[Next para:]
And so in the third century the monastic movement was born in Egypt. The idea was encouraged by the exile of Christian leaders, such as St Dionysus of Alexandria whom the persecution of Valerian forced to withdraw to the Kufra oasis. But already before that the persecution by Decius had compelled a young ascetic, Paul of Thebes, to flee into the desert, where he stayed until he died, reputedly 113 years old. Soon afterwards St Anthony was to begin his life of seclusion which was to make monasticism famous. Born in upper Egypt in c. 251, he found a much older solitary already living near his native village....
Quote ID: 4761
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 220
Section: 2E2
And so in the third century the monastic movement was born in Egypt. The idea was encouraged by the exile of Christian leaders, such as St Dionysius of Alexandria whom the persecution of Valerian forced to withdraw to the Kufra oasis. But already before that the persecution by Decius (250) had compelled a young ascetic, Paul of Thebes, to flee into the desert, where he stayed until he died, reputedly 113 years old. Soon afterwards St Antony began his life of seclusion which was to make monasticism famous.
Quote ID: 4762
Time Periods: 34
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 221
Section: 2E2
People continually flocked to join him, no longer in fear of persecution since persecution had ended, but hankering for a substitute—martyrs for mortification in an age when blood-martyrdom was no more. This self-torment, pursued even to extreme forms such as castration (forbidden in the fourth century by canon law), seemed to such men the only way to be soldiers of Christ and to avoid worldly temptation and the eternal damnation that followed in its wake. This movement of escapist unworldliness was alien to contemporary ecclesiastical spokesmen, but gained remarkable impetus within a short time.
Quote ID: 4763
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 202/203
Section: 3A1,3A4B,2E2
The emperor’s desire to bring the bishops into the fabric of the state involved a dramatic reversal of their status. Enormous patronage became available to those bishops ready to accept the emperor’s position on doctrine, and those who took advantage of it came to have access to vast wealth and social prestige. Rome was earmarked for the bishop’s household, so that by the end of the fourth century Ammianus Marcellinus was able to describe the extravagant lifestyle of the bishops of Rome: “Enriched by the gifts of matrons, they ride in carriages, dress splendidly and outdo kings in the lavishness of their table.”This was not the whole story as Ammianus himself recognized. As we shall see, many Christians were sufficiently repelled by the new wealth of the Church to be drawn to asceticism; even if they did not make for the desert themselves, many bishops turned to austerity and gave their wealth to the poor to reinforce their Christian authority. Whether they succumbed to the financial temptations or not, however, bishops were now men with a stake in good order, and when the traditional city elites and, in the west, the structure of government itself collapsed, it was to be they who took control.
Quote ID: 4894
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 233
Section: 2E2
A clean body and clean clothes betoken and unclean mind.The Ascetic Paula, A Roman Aristocrat, To Her Nuns
{1.} Quoted in J. Kelly, Jerome (London, 1975), p.132
Quote ID: 4939
Time Periods: 45
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 235
Section: 3C,2E2
Cassian, who brought monasticism from east to west, and who, unlike (as we shall see) Jerome, had a relatively balanced and perceptive view of asceticism, put it more prosaically:As their [the early Christians’] fervour cooled, many combined their confession of Christ with wealth; but those who kept the fervour of the apostles, recalling that former perfection, withdrew from the cities and from the society of those who thought this laxness of living permissible for themselves and for the church, to spots on the edges of towns, or more remote places and there practised privately and in their own groups the things they remembered the apostles had instituted for the whole body of the church.
{6.} R.A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990), p.166
Quote ID: 4941
Time Periods: 45
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 238
Section: 2E2
While the Egyptian ascetics were the most celebrated, those of the Syrian desert ran them close. Here the custom was for ascetics to ascend pillars (hence their name, Stylites, from stulos, a pillar) in the hope of coming to heaven. Some would stay up there for decades, with their lower limbs festering through inactivity. The faithful would be hauled up in baskets for consultations.
Quote ID: 4942
Time Periods: 34
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 238
Section: 2E2
The archetype of the desert ascetic was Anthony.
Quote ID: 4943
Time Periods: 34
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 239
Section: 2E2
Anthony’s life was written up either by Athanasius or someone close to him, in about 357, and this “vibrant ascetic odyssey,” as Peter Brown has described it, caught the imagination of Christians throughout the empire. Anthony, wrote its author, “possessed in a very high degree apatheia--perfect self-control, freedom from passion--the ideal of every monk and ascetic striving for perfection. Christ, who was free from every emotional weakness and fault, is his model.”
Quote ID: 4944
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 243/244
Section: 2E2
One such was Jovinian, a monk from Rome who became an ascetic himself but subsequently renounced asceticism as spiritually meaningless. Its rationale seems to have simply dissolved for him. Why should a virgin be given prominence in the eyes of God over a married person? he asked. Why should not one eat and drink freely so long as one offered thanks to God for one’s good fortune? What was important was baptism followed by a life committed to faith and true repentance after sin.
Quote ID: 4949
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 244
Section: 2E2
Naturally, Jerome, now in Bethlehem, was outraged and was impelled to write one of his most vicious counter-attacks--he described Jovinian’s book as “vomit which he has thrown up” and its writer as a debauchee who gambolled in mixed baths (a particular place of iniquity for the ascetic) while true Christians fasted. Jovinian was declared a heretic, ordered to be flogged with leaden whips and forced to leave Rome for Milan.
Quote ID: 4950
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 245
Section: 2E2
Cassian, who had originally seen that solitary life as an ideal, began to realize its drawbacks, not least in that personalities which were already deranged could become far worse in solitude. “The more it a vice is hidden as when as ascetic goes off on his own, the more deeply will that serpent foment in the sickening man and incurable disease,” he shrewdly noted.{29.} Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church, pg. 187.
Quote ID: 4951
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 246
Section: 2E2
In these early days solitude was still regarded as the aim of the true ascetic, and Pachomius’ monasteries were seen as a sort of halfway house, providing, as it were, an initial training where the believer could learn to live in silence and good order before retreating into a more remote setting. Eventually, however, to live in a monastery became an end in itself.
Quote ID: 4952
Time Periods: 34
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 247
Section: 2E2
As Cassian put it, echoing Basil, “the first proof that you possess humility is this; that you submit to the judgment of the elders, not only what you are to do, but also what you are to think sic.” It is in the very discipline of living that the monk comes close to God. Order brings its own reward.
Quote ID: 4953
Time Periods: 4
Complete Palladas, The
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 8776
Time Periods: 4
Complete Palladas, The
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 9772
Time Periods: 4
Complete Palladas, The
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 9778
Time Periods: 4
Complete Palladas, The
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 9793
Time Periods: 4
Complete Palladas, The
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 9878
Time Periods: 4
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 4.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 337 Page: 281/282
Section: 2E2
THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER17. Therefore, they who presume to run out of the world by going into the desert or the wilderness; who, unwilling to occupy the inn but finding it indispensable nevertheless, must become their own hosts—these are great and unreasonable fools.
….
HOW TO ESCAPE THE WORLD
18. But how are we to flee the world? Not by donning caps and creeping into a corner or going into the wilderness. You cannot so escape the devil and sin. Satan will as easily find you in the wilderness in a gray cap as he will in the market in a red coat. It is the heart that must flee, and that by keeping itself “unspotted from the world,” as James 1, 27 says.
Quote ID: 7851
Time Periods: 7
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 194
Section: 2E2
The nature of Christian devotion inevitably changed when the constant threat of persecution diminished and then disappeared. Asceticism replaced martyrdom as the highest ideal to which Christians could normally aspire. At the beginning of the third century, Clement of Alexandria was the first Christian writer to place the ascetic on the same level as the martyr {42} During the two generations between 260 and 324 ascetism became a widespread way of expressing Christian piety, and religious communities were organized in which groups of Christians could withdraw from the world. . .[Footnote 42] E. E. Malone, The Monk and the Martyr (Studies in Christian Antiquity 12, 1950), 5 ff.
Quote ID: 1601
Time Periods: 34
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 195
Section: 2E2
By 324, the monk was an established figure in Egyptian village society. {49} The principal avatars of medieval monasticism were two Copts, Pachomius and Antony.
Quote ID: 1602
Time Periods: 4
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 293
Section: 2E2,3A4,3C
In the event, the most revolutionary aspects of Christianity proved to be Christian asceticism{1} and religious intolerance.{2} Each made a large contribution to the transformation of Graeco-Roman civilization into something else.{3}
Quote ID: 7628
Time Periods: 4
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 37
Section: 2E2
In all this development, there is no element of conversion, none of self-surrender.... The only phenomenon involving a self-surrender would be the occasional Greek who being at Hierapolis in Syria at the time of the great festival might take full part in it, like the native pilgrims, and brand himself or even in a sudden enthusiasm castrate himself and become a servant of the goddess like her local eunuch priests; Catullus (poem LXIII) tells of a young Greek who castrated himself in honour of Cybele and Attis.
Quote ID: 1913
Time Periods: 0
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 107
Section: 2E2
The Serapeum in Alexandria on its enormous platform, with its body of lodgings occupied by the pastophori, ‘the priests who had taken a vow of chastity’ (Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History, II, 23, 294) . . .
Quote ID: 5154
Time Periods: 0
Didache: The Oldest Church Manual
Phillip Schaff
Book ID: 254 Page: 181/182
Section: 2E2
2. For if indeed thou art able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord thou shalt be perfect; but if thou are not able, do what thou canst.….
This passage was very early made the basis of the doctrine of perfection and of a distinction between a lower morality for the masses and a higher morality for the elect few who renounce property and marriage for the sake of Christ, and thus literally follow him.
….
In the Nicene age the ascetic tendency assumed an organized form in the system of monasticism, which swept with irresistible moral force over the whole Catholic church, East and West, and found enthusiastic advocates among the greatest of the fathers; as Athanasius and Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine.
Quote ID: 6399
Time Periods: 45
Documents of the Christian Church
Edited by Henry Bettenson & Chris Maunder
Book ID: 74 Page: 194
Section: 2E2
3. That the law of continence enjoined on priests, which was first ordained to the prejudice of women, brings sodomy into all the Holy Church,
Quote ID: 2065
Time Periods: 7
Documents of the Christian Church
Edited by Henry Bettenson & Chris Maunder
Book ID: 74 Page: 197
Section: 2E2
11. That the vow of continence made in our Church by women who are frail and imperfect in nature, is the cause of bringing in the gravest horrible sins possible to human nature,
Quote ID: 2068
Time Periods: 7
Druids, The
Peter Berresford Ellis
Book ID: 212 Page: 80
Section: 2E2
The male Druids in Irish sources had a tonsure. It seems obvious that the Druids of Britain also had a similar form of haircut although it is not specifically stated.. . . .
When Christianity took hold among the Celts, this Druidic tonsure was preserved and became the tonsure of the Celtic Christian religieux, although in Ferfesa O’Mulchonry’s glossary (Annales Rioghachta Eireann), the name of the tonsure became berrad mog or the tonsura civilis. The most explicit description of the tonsure is given in Ceolfrid’s letter to Naiton, king of the Picts, who describes it as shaven at the front of the head, on a line from ear to ear, with the hair growing at the back. Of course, later Celtic Christian writers did not claim a Druidic origin for this tonsure arguing it was the tonsure of St. John.
Quote ID: 5222
Time Periods: 07
Druids, The
Peter Berresford Ellis
Book ID: 212 Page: 142
Section: 2E2
The troscad in ancient times was the effective means of someone of lesser social position compelling justice from someone of higher social position. Thus Druids could fast against a king, or even a man or woman in the lower order of society could fast against their chieftain.
Quote ID: 5227
Time Periods: 0
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 31
Section: 2E2
. . . Cynics, itinerant philosophic missionaries who were the mendicant monks of paganism . . .
Quote ID: 5256
Time Periods: 3
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 241
Section: 2E2
. . .although Pachomius only began his work in 323, by the turn of the century there were over seven thousand Pachomian monks and houses were being founded in all parts of the empire and beyond its frontiers.They needed control; their spirituality wanted guidance and they were required regulation.
Canon 4 of the Council of Chalcedon subjected the monasteries to episcopal control:
Let those who truly and sincerely lead the monastic life be counted worthy of becoming honour; but, forasmuch as certain persons using the pretext of monasticism bring confusion both upon the churches and into political affairs by going about promiscuously in the cities, and at the same time seeking to establish monasteries for themselves; it is decreed that no one anywhere build or found a monastery or oratory contrary to the will of the bishop of the city; . . .
Quote ID: 5350
Time Periods: 45
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 242
Section: 2E2
And no slave shall be received into any monastery to become a monk against the will of his master.
Quote ID: 5351
Time Periods: 45
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 242/243
Section: 2E2
Evagrian spirituality, with its Origenistic basis, was made familiar to the West by the work of John Cassian, the founder of monasteries at Marseilles c. 415 and the author of two widely influential books on the monastic life, . . .“Take heed to continue even to the end in that state of nakedness in which you make profession in the sight of God and of his angels. For not he who begins these things, but he who endures in them to the end shall be saved. The beginning of our salvation and the safeguard of it is the fear of the Lord.” [John Cassian]
Quote ID: 5352
Time Periods: 45
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 244
Section: 2E2
In contrast to the individualism of the hermits and the large measure of personal preference allowed by Pachomius, Benedict, like Basil, legislated for a community life free from excesses. The monks were to live as a family under the government of the abbot to whom they were to promise utter obedience. They were to observe poverty, chastity and stability, i.e. they were not to pass from house to house. They had to share in the agricultural and domestic work, read and learn the psalms. Their timetable was regulated by the performance of the divine office - Vigils at 2.0 a.m., Lauds at dawn, Prime at six, Terce at nine, Sext at noon, None at three, Vespers at four-thirty and Compline at six. This was the system, partly through its intrinsic merit and partly through the influence of such men as Gregory the Great, that was gradually adopted throughout Europe, replacing even the vigorous Celtic monasticism that had flourished in comparative isolation on the extreme confines of the western empire.
Quote ID: 5353
Time Periods: 7
Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 112
Section: 2E2
Almost every survey starts with some account of Antony the Egyptian hermit, who was born around 250 and probably lived for more than a hundred years.
Quote ID: 2117
Time Periods: 34
Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 113
Section: 2E2
This initial concentration on Egypt is probably justified. Organized asceticism was in a very real sense an Egyptian invention.
Quote ID: 2118
Time Periods: 3
Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 115
Section: 2E2
With time, the writings of the commentators themselves acquired canonical status within the ascetic world. Chief among them was Origen, the great theologian of Alexandria (d. 254).….
The pioneers of the ascetic movement were instructed at the most detailed level by this great thinker.
Quote ID: 2119
Time Periods: 23
Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 120
Section: 2E2
The Platonist view of matter and spirit, the Epicurean delight in secluded comradeship, the Stoic emphasis on interior detachment and tranquility: all had their part to play in the formation of the Christian ascetic.
Quote ID: 2120
Time Periods: 01234
Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 121
Section: 2E2
The very notion that virtue can be acquired by following a rule of life has a certain Jewish complexion.
Quote ID: 2121
Time Periods: 12
Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 122
Section: 2E2
Realizing, therefore, that there can be no straightforward account of Christian asceticism and of the emergence of the monastic life, we end with two consoling emphases. First, we must sharpen our skills in relation to the texts. The texts are tendentious. Their apparent reportage is an illusion. We must let them hint more loudly at the variety they attempt to deny or undermine. Second, we must investigate a wealth of antecedent: pagan, of course; but heterodox also; and above all, Jewish.
Quote ID: 2122
Time Periods: 234
Ecclesiastical History, Sozomen
Sozomen
Book ID: 86 Page: 29
Section: 2E2
Those who at this period had embraced monasticism were not the least in manifesting the church as most illustrious, and evidencing the truth of their doctrines by their virtuous line of conduct. Indeed, the most useful thing that has been received by man from God is their philosophy. They neglect many branches of mathematics and the technicalities of dialectics, because they regard such studies as superfluous, and as a useless expenditure of time, seeing that they contribute nothing towards correct living.
Quote ID: 2314
Time Periods: 5
Ecclesiastical History, Sozomen
Sozomen
Book ID: 86 Page: 31
Section: 2E2
Whether the Egyptians or others are to be regarded as the founders of this philosophy, it is universally admitted that Antony, the great monk, developed this course of life, by morals and befitting exercises, to the summit of exactness and perfection.
Quote ID: 2315
Time Periods: 34
Ecclesiastical History, Sozomen
Sozomen
Book ID: 86 Page: 33
Section: 2E2
It was about this period that Ammon, the Egyptian, embraced philosophy. It is said that he was compelled to marry by his family, but that his wife never knew him carnally; for on the day of their marriage, when they were alone, and when he as the bridegroom was leading her as the bride to his bed, he said to her, “Oh, woman! our marriage has indeed taken place, but it is not consummated”; and then he showed her from the Holy Scriptures that it was her chief good to remain a virgin, and entreated that they might live apart. She was convinced by his arguments concerning virginity, but was much distressed by the thought of being separated from him; and therefore, though occupying a separate bed, he lived with her for eighteen years, during which time he did not neglect the monastic exercises.
Quote ID: 2316
Time Periods: 34
Ecclesiastical History, Sozomen
Sozomen
Book ID: 86 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
Zealous of reforming the life of those who were engaged about the churches, the Synod enacted laws which were called canons. While they were deliberating about this, some thought that a law ought to be passed enacting that bishops and presbyters, deacons and subdeacons, should hold no intercourse with the wife they had espoused before they entered the priesthood; but Paphnutius, the confessor, stood up and testified against this proposition;
Quote ID: 2323
Time Periods: 4
Ecclesiastical History, The, Socrates Scholasticus
Socrates Scholasticus
Book ID: 217 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
Chapter XXI. Of Anthony the Monk.WHAT sort of a man the monk Anthony was, who lived in the same age, in the Egyptian desert, and how he openly contended with devils, clearly detecting their devices and wily modes of warfare, and how he performed many miracles, it would be superfluous or us to say; for Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, has anticipated us, having devoted an entire book to his biography. Of such good men there was a large number at one time during the years of the Emperor Constantine.
Quote ID: 5391
Time Periods: 34
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 34
Section: 2E2
Ausonius is a good example of a poet whose Christianity the prejudices of modern readers have made questionable; but it is not likely that either he or his friends would have entertained any doubts about it. As a man of letters and a teacher of distinguished pupils in Gaul in the 360s and 370s, he had not been exposed to the malaise about secular culture which was to afflict so many of his younger contemporaries.
Quote ID: 5415
Time Periods: 4
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 34/35
Section: 2E2
But nowhere in his writings can the slightest opposition be discovered between the two components of his mind: his Christian beliefs and his classical culture, heavy with the weight of pagan imagery as it was.{16} He would have been baffled by Jerome’s view that the conversion of a Roman senator demanded a revolution - such as Jerome’s friend Pammachius had wrought - in his life-style and the conversion of a man of letters in his style of writing.{17}If no such thought disturbed Ausonius, it did disturb his pupil, the Christian poet Paulinus.
Quote ID: 5416
Time Periods: 4
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 35
Section: 2E2
Ausonius and Paulinus shared a literary culture, a way of life based on landed wealth, and high status in Roman provincial society. They also shared their religion, and a form of Christian spirituality in which images of the Gospel blended with an ancient Latin tradition reaching back to Virgil and beyond. They both saw the life of the great senatorial estate in terms of a withdrawal from the busy distractions of town life, as a secessus in villam, the life of recollection and return to rural simplicity, close to the soil and the rhythms of God’s nature.{20} ‘Your wilderness’, Paulinus once wrote to a correspondent, ‘is not a desert, but a place set apart non deserta sed secreta, untouched by the world’s darkness and avoided by the waiting demons’.{21} In the seclusion of domestic tranquillity Paulinus found a refuge from the turmoil of public life in ‘rural repose’ (ruris otium).{22} This ‘spirituality of the great landowner’ is a distinct undercurrent in the ascetic literature of the fifth century.
Quote ID: 5417
Time Periods: 4
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 36
Section: 2E2
The step from Christianity to renunciation of wealth, prestige and the enjoyment of material goods, which seemed such a long one to Ausonius, was a short one for Paulinus.
Quote ID: 5418
Time Periods: 4
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 36/37
Section: 2E2
They seem to actually echo the words used by Jerome in a letter to Paulinus in praise of the ascetic life.{26} For all the ascetic colouring in which Paulinus presents Christianity in this letter, however, what is striking is that in the end he refuses to identify the two, and goes out of his way to assure Jovius that God does not ask him and his family to renounce their wealth, but rather to acknowledge that it is He who bestowed it on them.{27}
Quote ID: 5419
Time Periods: 45
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 38/39
Section: 2E2
Opposition to asceticism had an ancestry almost as ancient as did asceticism. Differences of opinion on continence erupted as early as the second century.{34} At the Council of Nicaea the aged Paphnutius, who had himself suffered for his faith, defended the ideal of Christian marriage with the assertion that a married man’s intercourse with his wife deserved the name of chastity.{35} It was in Jerome’s time that this opposition swelled into protest against the growing gap between the religion of the ordinary Christian and that of the ascetic elite. Asceticism and virginity came under repeated attack, not least by some of Jerome’s enemies. In 383 one Helvidius affirmed the equal value of marriage and chastity. In 403 another target of Jerome’s invective, Vigilantius, turned in revulsion from asceticism.Pastor John’s Note: If the Church drove them out, then they would have opposed them.
Quote ID: 5420
Time Periods: 2345
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 41
Section: 2E2
The ramifications of these groups and their conflicts spread as far afield as the monastic establishments of the Holy Land,{42} into Gaul and Spain, and, especially after the Gothic sack of Rome in 410, into Sicily and North Africa, where many of the Roman nobility flocked for safety. Links of friendship, patronage, the giving and receiving of spiritual guidance, as well as, sometimes, suspicion and conflict, created a web of complex threads constituting what a recent scholar has called this international ‘ascetic brotherhood’.{43}
Quote ID: 5421
Time Periods: 45
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 163/164
Section: 2E2
In his Institutes Cassian gave examples of heroic obedience: of John, who conscientiously watered the dry stick given him by his master, twice daily, ‘not mindful of the impossibility of the command’, bringing water from two miles away, through wind and weather, through illness and health, and would have continued when, at the end of a year, his master tore up the stick to see if it had begun to sprout; or the monk who obediently steeled himself to feel no emotion at the sight of his little son neglected and maltreated: such examples, Cassian wrote, could not be passed over in silence, as ‘the good of obedience...holds the primacy among the other virtues’.{23}Pastor John notes: John’s note: stupid
Quote ID: 5452
Time Periods: 4
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 166
Section: 2E2
Like Jerome before him, and like many other ascetics, Cassian saw Christian history in terms of a decline from Apostolic perfection to corruption brought by wealth and respectability. It was only a short step to a vision of the monastic life as institutionalised protest.
Quote ID: 5453
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 269
Section: 2E2
Book III chapter XXXClement, whose words we cited recently in the context of the previous quotation, enumerates, on account of those who reject marriage, those of the Apostles who were married, saying, “Or will they disapprove even of the Apostles? For Peter and Philip begat children, and Philip even gave his daughters to husbands, while Paul himself does not hesitate in one of his letters to address {1} his wife whom he did not take about with him in order to facilitate his mission.”
Pastor John’s note: 3rd pope pro-marriage
Quote ID: 3087
Time Periods: 1
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 487
Section: 2D3A,2E2
Book V chapter XVIII
So he says about Montanus. And a little further on he writes thus about the prophetesses. “Thus we prove that these first prophetesses themselves deserted their husbands from the moment that they were filled with the spirit. What a lie it is then for them to call Priscilla a virgin.” Then he goes on saying: “Does not all Scripture seem to you to forbid a prophet from receiving gifts and money? Therefore when I see that the prophetess has received gold and silver and expensive clothes, how should I refrain from blaming her?”
Then further on he says this about one of their confessors: “Moreover, Themiso too, who was garbed with specious covetousness, who did not endure the sign of confession but exchanged prison for wealth when he ought to have been humble-minded on this account, and boasted that he was a martyr, dared, in imitation of the apostle, to compose an epistle general, to instruct those whose faith was better than his, and to contend with empty sounding words and to blaspheme against the Lord and the apostles and the holy church.”
And again he writes thus about another of those who were honoured among them as martyrs: “But in order that we may not speak about more of them, let the prophetess {1} tell us the story of Alexander, who calls himself a martyr, with whom she joins in revels, to whom many pay reverence. We need not tell of his robberies and the other crimes for which he has been punished, but the record-house {2} has them. Which then forgives the other’s sins? Does the prophet absolve the martyr of robbery or the martyr forgive the prophet for avarice? For the Lord said, ‘Provide neither gold nor silver nor two coats’; but these, doing wholly otherwise, have transgressed by the acquisition of these forbidden things. For we will show that their so-called prophets and martyrs make gain not only from the rich but from the poor and from orphans and widows.
COPIED
Quote ID: 3105
Time Periods: 23
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 491
Section: 2D3A,2E2
Book V chapter XVIII
For it is necessary to test the fruits of the prophet, for from the fruits the tree is known. But, that that the story of Alexander may be known to those who wish, he was convicted by Aemilius Pompinus, proconsul in Ephesus, not for being a Christian but for his daring robberies, and he was an old offender. Then, by falsely claiming the name of the Lord he was released, having deceived the Christians there, and his own diocese from which he came would not receive him because he was a robber, and those who wish to learn his story have the public records of Asia at their disposition. {1} The prophet is ignorant about him though he lived with him for many years, but we have exposed him, and through him expose also the nature of the prophet. We can show the same in many instances, and, if they are, let them stand the test.”
PJ Note: Alexander must have been known as a Montanist.
COPIED
Quote ID: 3106
Time Periods: 2
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 491
Section: 2D3A,2E2
Book V chapter XVIII
And again in another part of the book he says this about their boasted prophets: “If they deny that their prophets have taken gifts let them admit this, that if they have been convicted, they are not true prophets, and we will give countless proofs of this. But it is necessary to test all the fruits of a prophet. Tell me, does a prophet dye his hair? Does he pencil his eyelids? Does he love ornaments? Does he gamble and dice? Does he lend money? Let them state whether these things are right or not, and I will show that they have been done among them.”
COPIED
Quote ID: 3107
Time Periods: 2
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 117
Section: 2E2,4A
First of all they renounce their property. When they begin the philosophical mode of life, he says, they give up their goods to their relatives, and then, renouncing all the cares of life, they go forth beyond the walls and dwell in lonely fields and gardens, knowing well that intercourse with people of a different character is unprofitable and harmful.
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, II.xvii.
Quote ID: 9523
Time Periods: 23
Fall of Rome: And The End of Civilization, The
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Book ID: 222 Page: 40
Section: 2E2
Famously, Edward Gibbon, inspired by the secularist thinking of the Enlightenment, blamed Rome’s fall in part on the fourth-century triumph of Christianity and the spread of monasticism: ‘a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes, who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.’ {14}
Quote ID: 5482
Time Periods: 4
Fall of Rome: And The End of Civilization, The
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Book ID: 222 Page: 40/41
Section: 2E2
But in 1964 the pernicious influence of the Church was given a new lease of life by the then doyen of late Roman studies, A. H. M. Jones. Under the wonderful heading ‘Idle Mouths’, Jones lambasted the economically unproductive citizens of the late empire—aristocrats, civil servants, and churchmen: ‘the Christian church imposed a new class of idle mouths on the resources of the empire . . . a large number lived on the alms of the peasantry, and as time went on more and more monasteries acquired landed endowments which enabled their inmates to devote themselves entirely to their spiritual duties.’ These are Gibbon’s ‘specious demands of charity and devotion’ expressed in measured twentieth-century prose.
Quote ID: 5483
Time Periods: 45
Fall of Rome: And The End of Civilization, The
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Book ID: 222 Page: 172
Section: 4B,2E2
For instance, the opinion of the ‘Dark Ages’ expressed in 1932 by the English Catholic writer Christopher Dawson has close echoes in recent scholarship, although his religious enthusiasm and affiliation are much more transparent than those of most present-day historians:To the secular historian, the early Middle Ages must inevitably still appear as the Dark Ages, as ages of barbarism, without secular culture or literature, given up to unintelligible disputes on incomprehensible dogmas . . . But to the Catholic they are not dark as much as ages of dawn, for they witnessed the conversion of the West, the foundation of Christian civilisation, and the creation of Christian art and Catholic liturgy. Above all, they were the Age of the Monks… {7}
Quote ID: 5523
Time Periods: 7
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 122
Section: 2E2
...fourth-century Christian intellectuals set up in their writings a deliberately non-classical anti-hero, the uneducated Christian Holy Man, who, despite not having passed through the hands of the grammarian, and despite characteristically abandoning the town for the desert, achieved heights of wisdom and virtue that went far beyond anything that could be learned from Homer or Virgil, or even from participating in self-government. The Holy Man was the best-case product of the monastery....
Quote ID: 5566
Time Periods: 4
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 122
Section: 2E2
The monastic lifestyle was extravagantly praised by highly educated Christians, who saw in its strictures a level of devotion equivalent to that of the Christian martyrs of old.Pastor John notes: John’s note: (in reference above to the highly educated Christians) Such men were no threat to their wealth.
Quote ID: 5567
Time Periods: 4
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 123
Section: 2E2
Similarly, the number of upper-class individuals who renounced their wealth and lifestyles for a life of Christian devotion pales into insignificance beside the 6,000 or so who by AD 400 were actively participating in the state as top bureaucrats. In legislation passed in the 390s, all of these people were required to be Christian. For every Paulinus of Pella, there were many more newly Christianized Roman landowners happy to hold major state office, and no sign of any crisis of conscience among them.
Quote ID: 5569
Time Periods: 45
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 189
Section: 2E2
The war on the Danube had affected only the Empire’s Balkan provinces, a relatively poor and isolated frontier zone, and even here some kind of Romanness survived. The late fourth - and early fifth-century layers of the recently excavated Roman city of Nicopolis ad Istrum are striking for the number of rich houses - 45 per cent of the urban area - that suddenly appeared inside the city walls. {63} It looks as though, since their country villas were now too vulnerable, the rich were running their estates from safe inside the city walls.
Quote ID: 5589
Time Periods: 45
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 422
Section: 2E2,4B
Landed wealth is by definition immovable. Unless you belonged to the super-rich of the Roman world, owning lands far to the east as well as in Gaul or Spain, then when the Roman state started to fail, you were left with little choice. You either had to mend fences with your nearest incoming barbarian king so as to secure the continuation of your property rights, or give up the elite status into which you had been born. If, as the Empire collapsed around them, Roman landowners perceived the slightest chance of holding on to their lands, they were bound to take it.
Quote ID: 5603
Time Periods: 45
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 154
Section: 2E2
…significant numbers of elites do not seem to have embraced Christian ascetic practices before the mid-fourth century.{30}
Quote ID: 8319
Time Periods: 234
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 161
Section: 2E2,3A1,4A
Parents sometimes charged sons who entered the episcopacy with a betrayal of their obligations to their families.Pg.163 4A, 2E2- …from 358 until 362 and had built up a substantial family fortune.{107} While Urbanus lived, his son “bid complete farewell to his studies in the schools” and retreated to the mountains to pursue “Christian philosophy.”
Quote ID: 8322
Time Periods: 4
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 163
Section: 2E2
There were many more men who, like Theodore and this Phoenician youth, abandoned their postadolescent flirtations with an ascetic life in the 370s when their parents left them the family property. This may, in fact, have even been true of the vast majority of the dropouts of the 370s. But their friends and peers often did not let them go easily.
Quote ID: 8323
Time Periods: 4
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 60
Section: 2E2
for info on the roots of asceticism.
Quote ID: 5645
Time Periods: 34
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 62
Section: 2E2
One Egyptian “holy man”, upon being informed by a delegation from a city that he had been selected as their bishop, cut off his ear, claiming that no mutilated man could qualify to be a church leader. When some criticized for this dip into the Old Testament standard for the priesthood, he threatened to cut out his tongue as well.
Quote ID: 5646
Time Periods: 345
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 63
Section: 2E2
Sometimes hermits were forcibly taken to be bishops, and had to adjust to the political entanglements and ecclesiastical administration which necessarily followed.
Quote ID: 5647
Time Periods: 345
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 64
Section: 2E2
. . . celibacy “came to dominate the Christian world”
Quote ID: 5651
Time Periods: 34
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 70
Section: 2E2
Most bishops and monks of the fourth and fifth centuries were married men with “family responsibilities that antedated their adoption of the celibate life.” A number of wives joined their husbands in celibacy, but some were sent to nunneries “not always in an entirely voluntary manner.”
Quote ID: 5652
Time Periods: 45
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 72
Section: 2E2
By late Antiquity, the monastic life no longer as appealing to the masses.
Quote ID: 5653
Time Periods: 56
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 144
Section: 1A,2E2,4B
Gibbon lamented that “Soldier’s pay was lavished on a useless multitude of both sexes, who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.”Decline and Fall, 4:175.
Pastor John’s Note: What Gibbon failed to acknowledge is the powerful effect that such claims had on the minds of people; it proved to be more effective in permanently subduing the masses to the will of those who would rule over them than any army of soldiers could have.
Quote ID: 5688
Time Periods: 45
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 144
Section: 1A,2E2,4B
Footnote “The huge army of clergy and monks were for the most part idle mouths, living upon offerings, endowments and state subsidies.”from a “Jones”, a quoted scholar.
Quote ID: 5689
Time Periods: 45
From Roman To Merovingian Gaul
Alexander Callander Murray
Book ID: 93 Page: 57
Section: 2E2
As the voyage continues, Capraria now appears. The island is a mess, filled with men who flee from the light. They call themselves ‘monks’, a Greek name, because they want to live by themselves, with no one to see them. They are afraid of fortune’s gifts, even while they fear the harm she causes. Who would avoid being miserable by choosing to be miserable? What twisted mind came up with such lunacy as to reject good things as long as you are in fear of evil ones?
Quote ID: 2384
Time Periods: 4
From Roman To Merovingian Gaul
Alexander Callander Murray
Book ID: 93 Page: 58
Section: 2E2
Gorgona arises surrounded by water in the midst of the sea flanked by Pisa and Corsica. I turn away from cliffs, monuments of a recent calamity. Here a fellow countryman was lost in a living death. For not long ago one of our youths, rich in ancestry with property and a wife to match, was driven by furies to abandon home and society and entered a shameful retreat, a credulous exile. The unfortunate fellow thought that filth is conducive to heavenly endeavors and inflicted on himself more cruelty than would offend gods. I ask you, is this not a sect more harmful than the poisons of Circe? In her times bodies were transformed, these days it is minds.
Quote ID: 2385
Time Periods: 4
History of Rome
Michael Grant
Book ID: 109 Page: 453
Section: 2E2
There were also various other causes of the downfall of the western empire, secondary and peripheral, though not altogether unimportant. One of these was the proliferation of dropouts who refused to participate in communal and public life. There were many people who found the social and economic situation intolerable and in consequence went underground and became the enemies of society. A large number of them became hermits and monks and nuns, who abandoned the company of their fellow human beings and, in the manner of modern Jesus-people or followers of gurus, divorced themselves from society, shaking the dust of the imperial system off their feet as completely as if they had never been part of it all.Then, early in the following century, John Cassian, founder of a monastery at Massilia (ca. 415), wrote works that induced many a nobleman to make the transition from senator to monk. By this time, however, the monastic life was no longer the end of a career but often led to a bishopric; monasticism had become respectable and was on its way to the prestige conferred upon it by St. Benedict (ca. 480-547). But in its earlier days it had attracted those who wanted to escape from the community; and at all times, granted its steadfast attempts to maintain Christianity’s spiritual commitment in face of an insidious society, it deprived the state of greatly needed manpower and revenue.
Quote ID: 2636
Time Periods: 456
How the Irish Saved Civilization
Thomas Cahill
Book ID: 111 Page: 66
Section: 2E2
Augustine goes further, and by the end of his life, the reformed profligate deems a woman’s embraces “sordid, filthy, and horrible.”
Quote ID: 2664
Time Periods: 45
Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: xv
Section: 2E2
Page 150: Askesis was not indigenous to Christianity. There was both a pre-Christian pagan asceticism and also a Jewish form, reflected, for example, in the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls.
Quote ID: 7733
Time Periods: 0
Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: 166
Section: 2E2
But early in the fourth century the practice of the ascetic life in Christianity came to be shown the same outward way, but with a more marked emphasis, as the similar practice in philosophy. It was indeed known as philosophy. It was most akin to Cynicism, with which it had sometimes already been confused, and its badges were the badges of Cynicism, the rough blanket and the unshorn hair. To wear the blanket and to let the hair grow was to profess divine philosophy, the higher life of self-discipline and sanctity. It was to claim to stand on a higher level and to be working out a nobler ideal than average Christians. The practice soon received a further development. Just as ordinary philosophers had sometimes found life in society to be intolerable and had gone into “retreat,” so the Christian philosophers began to withdraw altogether from the world, and to live their lives of self-discipline and contemplation in solitude. The retention of the old names shows the continuity of the practice. They were still practising discipline, -Greek-, or philosophy, -Greek-. So far as they retired from society, they were still said “to go into retreat,” -Greek-, whence the current appellation of -Greek-, “anchorets.”
Quote ID: 7742
Time Periods: 4
Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: 168
Section: 2E2
It was inevitable that when the Puritan party had left the main body, and when the most spiritually-minded of those who remained detached themselves from the common life of their brethren, there should be a deterioration in the average moral conceptions of the Christian Churches. It was also inevitable that those conceptions should be largely shaped by Greek influences. The Pauline ethics vanished from the Christian world. For the average members of the churches were now the average citizens of the empire, educated by Greek methods, impregnated with the dominant ethical ideas. They accepted Christian ideas, but without the enthusiasm which made them a transforming force.....
At the end of the fourth century the new state of things was formally recognized by ecclesiastical writers. Love was no more “the handbook of divine philosophy:” the chief contemporary theologian of the West, Ambrose of Milan, formulated the current theory in a book which is the more important because it not merely expresses the ideas of his time and seals the proof of their prevalence, but also became the basis of the moral philosophy of the Middle Ages. But the book is less Christian than Stoical. It is a rechauffe of the book which Cicero had compiled more than three centuries before, chiefly from Panaetius. It is Stoical, not only in conception, but also in detail. It makes virtue the highest good. It makes the hope of the life to come to a subsidiary and not a primary motive. Its ideal of life is happiness: it holds that a happy life is a life according to nature, that it is realized by virtue, and that it is capable of being realized here on earth. Its virtues are the ancient virtues of wisdom and justice, courage and temperance. It tinges each of them with a Christian, or at least with a Theistic colouring; but the conception of each of them remains what it had been to the Greek moralists. Wisdom, for example, is Greek wisdom, with the addition that no man can be wise who is ignorant of God: justice is Greek justice, with the addition that its subsidiary form of beneficence is helped by the Christian society. The victory of Greek ethics was complete.
Quote ID: 7743
Time Periods: 4567
Inheritance of Rome, The
Chris Wickham
Book ID: 236 Page: 178
Section: 2E2
The miracles of saints when they were dead were by contrast safer, ‘much more worthy of praise’, as Gregory says elsewhere, because they came from completed lives, and from people whose sanctity was testable; the bodies of the saintly dead were not corrupted, and smelt of roses, so that it could be seen that they were not ordinary sinners. Dead saints were also easier to control.
Quote ID: 5923
Time Periods: 34
Irenaeus, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 671 Page: 569/570
Section: 2E2
“This [custom], of not bending the knee upon Sunday, is a symbol of the resurrection, through which we have been set free, by the grace of Christ, from sins, and from death, which has been put to death under Him. Now this custom took its rise from apostolic times, as the blessed Irenaeus, the martyr and bishop of Lyons, declares in his treatise On Easter, in which he makes mention of Pentecost also; upon which [feast] we do not bend the knee, because it is of equal significance with the Lord’s day, for the reason already alleged concerning it.”
PJ footnote: Irenaeus, “Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenæus”, VII.
Quote ID: 9624
Time Periods: 24
Jerome, NPNF2 Vol. 6, Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 673 Page: 421
Section: 2E2
Rather let those who sleep to gratify their lust be compelled to watch that they may preserve their chastity.
Quote ID: 9644
Time Periods: 5
Jerome, NPNF2 Vol. 6, Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 673 Page: 422
Section: 2E2
I will fast with women; yea, with religious men whose looks witness to their chastity, and who, with the cheek pale from prolonged abstinence, show forth the chastity of Christ.
Quote ID: 9648
Time Periods: 5
Jerome, NPNF2 Vol. 6, Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 673 Page: 423
Section: 2E2
As for his argument that they who keep what they have, and distribute among the poor, little by little, the increase of their property, act more wisely than they who sell their possessions, and once for all give all away, not I but the Lord shall make answer:{1} “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and come, follow Me.” He speaks to him who wishes to be perfect, who, with the Apostles, leaves father, ship, and net. The man whom you approve stands in the second or third rank; yet we welcome him provided it be understood that the first is to be preferred to the second, and the second to the third.
Quote ID: 9650
Time Periods: 45
Jerome, NPNF2 Vol. 6, Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 673 Page: 423
Section: 2E2
Why, you will say, go to the desert? The reason is plain: That I may not hear or see you; that I may not be disturbed by your madness; that I may not be engaged in conflict with you; that the eye of the harlot may not lead me captive; that beauty may not lead me to unlawful embraces. You will reply: “This is not to fight, but to run away. Stand in line of battle, put on your armour and resist your foes, so that having overcome, you may wear the crown.” I confess my weakness. I would not fight in the hope of victory, lest some time or other I lose the victory. If I flee, I avoid the sword; if I stand, I must either overcome or fall. But what need is there for me to let go certainties and follow after uncertainties? Either with my shield or with my feet I must shun death. You who fight may either be overcome or may overcome. I who fly do not overcome, inasmuch as I fly; but I fly to make sure that I many not be overcome.
....
Moreover, what we have said respecting lust we must apply to avarice, and to all vices which are avoided by solitude. We therefore keep clear of the crowded cities, that we may not be compelled to do what we are urged to do, not so much by nature as by choice.
Quote ID: 9651
Time Periods: 5
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
And when they have given away all their wealth for the sake of Christ’s love, but still retain the heart’s old affection for the littlest things and are always quickly irritated because of them, they become in every respect fruitless and barren,….
Hence it is clearly proved that perfection is not immediately arrived at by being stripped and deprived of all one’s wealth or by giving up one’s honors, unless there is that love whose elements the Apostle describes, which consists in purity of heart alone.
Quote ID: 219
Time Periods: 2
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 46
Section: 2E2
Thus fasts, vigils, meditating on Scripture, and the being stripped and deprived of every possession are not perfection, but they are the tools of perfection. For the end of that discipline does not consist in these things; rather, it is by them that one arrives at the end.
Quote ID: 220
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 47
Section: 2E2
“You see, then, that the Lord considered the chief good to reside in theoria alone-that is, in divine contemplation.
Quote ID: 221
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 126/127
Section: 2E2
“The Apostle declares in regard to the bodily renunciation that we have been talking about: ‘If I gave all my goods to feed the poor and handed my body over to be burned, but did not have love, it would profit me nothing. {27} 8. The blessed Apostle would never have said this had he not in spirit foreseen the future-that some people who had given all their property to feed the poor would not be able to arrive at gospel perfection and at the lofty summit of love because they were dominated by pride and impatience and clung in their hearts to their former vices and wicked behavior...….
“Yet, consider carefully the fact that he did not simply say: If I give my property.
Quote ID: 223
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 155
Section: 2E2
I.1. Among the other men devoted to the Christian philosophy we also saw Abba Daniel, who was indeed equal in every kind of virtue to those who were dwelling in the desert of Skete...
Quote ID: 224
Time Periods: 34
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 170
Section: 2E2
XXI.1. “Something ridiculous should be mentioned. We noticed how some people, after the fervor of their initial renunciation, in which they have forsaken private property or abundant resources and this world’s soldiery and betaken themselves to monasteries, are so zealously attached to things that cannot be completely renounced and that are necessary in this life, although they are small and insignificant, that their concern for these things overarches their passion for all their previous possessions. To have despised extensive goods and property will certainly be of little profit to thee people, because they have transferred their feelings for those things (on account of which feelings these things should be despised) to small and insignificant items. 2. For, in holding on to the vice of covetousness and avarice-which they cannot exercise with respect to precious things-in regard to trifles, they prove that they have not cut off but only exchanged their former passion. Since they are excessively attached to mats, baskets, blankets, books, and other things of the sort, however trifling they may be, they are still held bound by the same yearnings as before. They even guard and defend these things so jealously that they are not ashamed to be upset with a brother because of them nor even-what is worse- to quarrel with him.
Quote ID: 225
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 173
Section: 2E2
4.1.1 Christian philosophy: On the use of the term “philosophy” in connection with Christianity, which dates from the middle of the second century,
Quote ID: 226
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 174
Section: 2E2
4.15ff. The temptation to pride arising from sexual purity is remarked already in the earliest non-canonical Christian literature and frequently thereafter. Cf. 1 Clem. 38.2; Ignatius, Poly. 5.2.
Quote ID: 227
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 175
Section: 2E2
Cf. also Augustine, De civ. Dei 14.13:”I dare say that it is beneficial to the proud to fall into open and manifest sinfulness, so that those who have already fallen by pleasing themselves may be displeasing to themselves.”
Quote ID: 228
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 409
Section: 2E2
I. When we were living in a cenobium in Syria and, after an initial training in the faith, had gradually and increasingly begun to desire a greater grace of perfection, we at once decided to go to Egypt
Quote ID: 232
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 637/638
Section: 2E2
2. “There are in Egypt three kinds of monks. Two of them are very good, while the third is lukewarm and utterly to be avoided. The first is that of the cenobites, who live together in a community and are governed by the judgment of one elder. The greatest number of monks dwelling throughout Egypt are of this kind. The second is that of the anchorites, who are first instructed in the cenobia and then, perfected in their practical way of life, choose the recesses of the desert.….
V.1. “The discipline of the cenobites took its rise at the time of the apostolic preaching. For such was the whole multitude of believers in Jerusalem, which is described thus in the Acts of the Apostles: ‘The multitude of believers had one heart and one soul, and none of them said that what he possessed was his own, but all things were common to them. {2} They sold their possessions and their belongings and distributed them to all as each had need. {3} And again: ‘Nor was there anyone needy among them, for as many as owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of what they sold and laid it at the feet of the apostles, and this was distributed to each just as each had need. {4}
2. “Such, I say, was the whole Church then, whereas now it is difficult to find even a few like that in the cenobia. But, at the death of the apostles, the multitude of believers began to grow lukewarm, especially those who came over to the faith of Christ from different foreign nations. Out of regard for their rudimentary faith and their inveterate paganism, the apostles asked nothing more of them than that they abstain ‘from things sacrificed to idols, from fornication, from things strangled, and from blood.{5} But this liberty, which was conceded to the pagans because of the weakness of their new faith, gradually began to spoil the perfection of the Church which was in Jerusalem, and, as the number of natives and of foreigners daily increased, the warmth of that new faith grew cold, and not only those who had come over to the faith of Christ but even those who were the leaders of the Church relaxed their strictness.
Quote ID: 233
Time Periods: 345
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 724
Section: 2E2
No longer hesitant about his own desire and determination, he turned all of his mind’s concern and care to the salvation of his spouse, and by similar exhortations he began to incite in her the desire with which he himself had been inflamed and to urge upon her with tears day and night that they should serve God together in purity and chastity. He said that a conversion to a better life should never be delayed, because the vain hope of a youthful age would be no provision against the finality of a sudden death, which in fact had snatched off boys, youths, and young men as well as old men in its arbitrary choice.Pastor John notes: John’s note: Theonas
Quote ID: 237
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 725
Section: 2E2
And if he was unable to have the blessing of joining Christ’s company with his wife, he preferred to be saved even at the expense of one member and as it were to enter the kingdom of heaven crippled, rather than to be condemned with a sound body. {25}3. He also added these words, and said: “If Moses permitted wives to be divorced because of hardness of heart, {26} why would Christ not allow this because of a desire for chastity?
Quote ID: 238
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 726
Section: 2E2
6. But if you want to be not my helpmeet but my seducer, and if you prefer to give your support not to me but to the adversary, and if you think that the sacrament of matrimony was given you so that you might defraud yourself of the salvation offered you and also keep me from being the Savior’s disciple, then I will manfully lay hold of the words uttered by Abba John, or rather by Christ himself, to the effect that no carnal affection should be able to keep me from a spiritual good. For ‘whoever does not hate father and mother and children and brothers and sisters and wife and fields, and his own soul besides, cannot be my disciple.’”{30}7. When, therefore, despite these and other such words the woman’s attitude was unbending, and she remained obstinate and unyielding, the blessed Theonas said: “If I am unable to keep you from death, neither shall you separate me from Christ. It is safer for me to be divorced from a human being than from God.” And so, inspired by the grace of God, he at once took steps to carry out his decision, and he did not permit the ardor of his desire to grow cold on account of any delay. For he immediately stripped himself of all his worldly property and took flight to a monastery.
Quote ID: 239
Time Periods: 34
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 727
Section: 2E2
3. Let each person, then, have his own opinion about this, as we have said. But I warn him to refrain from censorious criticism, lest he believe himself fairer or holier than the divine judgment, by which even the wonders of apostolic miracles were conferred on this man. I shall not even mention the opinion of numerous fathers, who manifestly did not only not blame his action but even lauded it to the extent that they preferred him to the most eminent and distinguished men in the choice for almsgiving. And I am sure that the judgment made by so many spiritual men, which had God as its author, was not erroneous, having been confirmed by such marvelous wonders, as has already been said.
Quote ID: 240
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 820
Section: 2E2
Then, returning to the possibility raised by the two friends that they might be able to convert their relatives, Abraham declares that a quiet life in the desert is far safer than one in the world, however many converts one might gain.
Quote ID: 241
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 825
Section: 2E2
2. And so, in an anxious confession, we laid before this Abraham the struggle of our thoughts, which prompt us with daily turmoil of soul to return to our own province and to see our relatives again. A great desire was occasioned in us by the fact that we remembered the aforementioned relatives of ours with such devotion and love that we imagined that they would never hinder our chosen orientation. We constantly thought over in our mind that we would receive much more from their solicitude and that we would be preoccupied by no worries about bodily things and not be distracted by looking for food if they concerned themselves joyfully with providing for absolutely all our needs. 3. Moreover, we also fed our souls with the hope of foolish joys, believing that we would gain very great fruit out of the conversion of the many persons who would be as it were guided to the way of salvation by our example and admonitions. In addition, there was painted before our eyes the setting of the ancestral property of our forebears and the pleasant and delightful nature of that region, and how graciously and agreeably it stretched out to the reaches of the wilderness, so that the recesses of the forests might not only gladden a monk but also provide sufficient supplies of food.
Quote ID: 242
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 826
Section: 2E2
God he came to our aid with a remedy, he kept silent for a long while and finally said with a deep groan:II.1. “The weakness of your thought shows that you have not yet renounced your worldly desires or mortified your former yearnings. These errant desires of yours testify to the fecklessness of your heart.
Quote ID: 243
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 830
Section: 2E2
GERMANUS: But it is not particularly clear why the proximity of our relatives, which you yourselves did not utterly reject, should be so avoided by us. For since we see that you have proceeded blamelessly along the whole path of perfection, and not only that you live in your own country but that some of you have not even removed yourselves very far from your villages, why do you think that what is not harmful for you is dangerous for us?”
Quote ID: 244
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian - Ancient Christian Writers, The Conferences
John Cassian
Book ID: 14 Page: 832
Section: 2E2
4. “Examine the recesses of your heart, then, and investigate carefully whether you would be able to maintain constantly such strictness of mind with respect to your relatives.….
X.I. GERMANUS: “In this regard you have clearly left nothing in doubt. For we are certain that we could by no means wear our present ragged clothing or go about barefoot every day in their proximity, and that there we would not procure what was necessary for eating with the same effort, while here we are obliged to carry even our very water on our backs every day from three miles away. Neither our sensibilities nor theirs would ever let us do these things in their presence.
Pastor John notes: John’s note: Add page 852
(page 852) 18. In words of this sort the blessed Abraham discussed the origin of and the remedy for our illusion, and he as it were laid before our eyes which deceitful thoughts the devil was author of, inspiring us with a desire for true mortification
Quote ID: 245
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian, The Institutes
John Cassian
Book ID: 238 Page: 21
Section: 2E2
And so, it is proper for a monk always to dress like a soldier of Christ, ever ready for battle, his loins girded.2. For the authority of Holy Scripture makes it clear that those who in the Old Testament were responsible for the beginnings of this profession—namely, Elijah and Elisha—went about dressed in this way. And we know that thereafter the leaders and authors of the New Testament—namely, John, Peter, and Paul and other men of the same caliber—behaved likewise.
Pastor John notes: John’s note: Good Grief!
….
“He was a hairy man, and his loins were girt with a leather belt.”(1) From his clothing the king at once pictured the man of God, and he said: “It was Elijah the Tishbite.”(2) He clearly recognized the man of God by his belt and by the hairy and unkempt aspect of his body because, among so many thousands of Israelites, this particular style was always associated with him; it was as it were a kind of trademark of his.
Quote ID: 5985
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian, The Institutes
John Cassian
Book ID: 238 Page: 26
Section: 2E2
X. We have said all of this so that it might not seem that we have left out anything concerning the Egyptians’ garb. But we ourselves should keep only those things that the situation of the place and the custom of the region permit.
Quote ID: 5986
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian, The Institutes
John Cassian
Book ID: 238 Page: 39
Section: 2E2
V. 1. For in the early days of the faith few indeed—but they were very upright—were regarded as monks, and they had received that form of life from the evangelist Mark of blessed memory, who was the first to rule as bishop over the city of Alexandria. They not only retained then those magnificent qualities that we read in the Acts of the Apostles were originally cultivated by the Church and by the throngs of believers (namely, “The multitude of believers had one heart and one soul, and none of them said that anything that he possessed was his own, but all things were common to them. For as many as owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of what they sold and laid it at the feet of the apostles, and this was distributed to each just as each had need”(5) but to these they even added things far more lofty. 2. For they went off to quite secluded places on the outskirts of the city and led a strict life of such rigorous abstinence that even those who did not share their religion were astonished at the arduous profession of their way of life.
Quote ID: 5987
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian, The Institutes
John Cassian
Book ID: 238 Page: 43
Section: 2E2
X. 1. When they come together, then, to celebrate the aforementioned services (which they call synaxes), everyone is so silent that, even though such a large number of brothers has gathered, one would easily believe that no one was present apart from the person who stands to sing the psalm in their midst.….
No sound is heard other than the priest concluding the prayer, except perhaps that which escapes by an ecstasy of the mind from the gate of the mouth and steals up all unawares on the heart, enkindled by the extreme and unendurable heat of the Spirit when what the mind, once inflamed, cannot keep within itself attempts to escape by a kind of ineffable groan issuing from the inmost chambers of the breast. 2. But they declare that the person who is lukewarm in mind and who prays loudly or makes any noise such as we have already mentioned, and particularly if he is overcome by yawning, sins doubly—in the first place because he is guilty of offering his…
Quote ID: 5988
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian, The Institutes
John Cassian
Book ID: 238 Page: 79
Section: 2E2
Their cenobium in the Thebaid is more populous than all the others inasmuch as it is stricter in its rigorous way of life, for in it more than five thousand brothers are ruled by a single abba, and this huge number of monks is subject at every moment to their elder with an obedience such as, among us, one could neither render to another nor demand of another even for a short while.….
III. 1. So, then, whoever seeks to be received into the discipline of the cenobium is never admitted until, by lying outside for ten days or more, he has given an indication of his perseverance and desire, as well as of his humility and patience. And when he has embraced the knees of all the brothers passing by and has been purposely rebuked and distained by everyone,…
Quote ID: 5989
Time Periods: 45
John Cassian, The Institutes
John Cassian
Book ID: 238 Page: 92/93
Section: 2E2
Now, I shall relate a deed of Abba Patermutus that is worthy of remembrance. He, desiring to renounce this world, persisted in keeping watch outside the monastery until, thanks to his unwavering perseverance and against every custom of the cenobia, he was called and received along with his young son, who was about eight years old.….
2. In order to find out more clearly whether he [the father] made more of his feelings for his kindred and of his own heart’s love or of obedience and mortification in Christ (which every renunciant ought to prefer out of love for him), the little boy was purposely neglected, clothed in rags rather than garments, and so covered over and marred with filth as to shock rather than delight his father whenever he would see him. He was also exposed to the blows and slaps of different persons, which he often with his own eyes saw inflicted even arbitrarily on the innocent youngster, such that whenever he saw his cheeks they were streaked with the dirty traces of tears. 3. And although the child was treated this way under his eyes day after day, the father’s heart nonetheless remained ever stern and unmoved out of love for Christ and by the virtue of obedience.
Quote ID: 5990
Time Periods: 45
Journal of Early Christian Studies Volume 19 / Number 3 / Fall 2011
The John Hopkins University Press
Book ID: 122 Page: 433
Section: 3A1,3A2A,2E2
In the sixth century, emperors, kings, and bishops discovered the monastery as a tool of government. In particular, this century saw the transition of confinement in a monastery from a voluntary form of penance to a legal penalty.
Quote ID: 2811
Time Periods: 6
Journal of Early Christian Studies Volume 19 / Number 3 / Fall 2011
The John Hopkins University Press
Book ID: 122 Page: 443
Section: 3A2A,2E2
Gregory habitually and expectedly prescribed monastic confinement for fugitive ascetics.{31}
Quote ID: 2815
Time Periods: 6
Journal of Early Christian Studies Volume 19 / Number 3 / Fall 2011
The John Hopkins University Press
Book ID: 122 Page: 471
Section: 2E2,3A1
Yet, as Conrad Leyser has shown, the significance of Gregory for the development of asceticism in late antiquity lies essentially in his dismissal of the monastery as the model for the ideal Christian community.. . . .
It is here where the monastery found its place in Gregory’s pastoral framework. It is not in its ability to foster a communal way of life, but in its ability to provide a space for correction within the hierarchy of episcopal power that monastery captured his interest. It may be argued that Gregory so fully embraced the new role of coercive authority that Justinian’s legislation gave to the church because it fit his idea that correction of sin was more urgent than ever.
Quote ID: 2825
Time Periods: 6
Journal of Early Christian Studies: Journal of the North American Patristics Society Volume 20 / Number 1 / Spring 2012
The John Hopkins University Press
Book ID: 121 Page: 144
Section: 2E2
Wilkinson/Dedicated WidowsSimply put, for the purposes of this essay, a “dedicated” widow will designate any Christian woman who has pledged (in whatever manner) the preservation of her widowed state to God. {10} This is a practice that seems to have begun quite early in Christian circles, though our evidence prior to late antiquity is rather thin. Increasingly in the fifth century and beyond, it became common for dedicated widows to enter monastic houses, but throughout the medieval period it also remained common for such women to retain their property and to live in semi-retirement in their own homes. {11}
Quote ID: 2780
Time Periods: 567
Koran, The
N. J. Dawood (translated with notes)
Book ID: 240 Page: 383
Section: 2E2
As for monasticism, they instituted it themselves (for We had not enjoined it on them), seeking thereby to please God; ….
Quote ID: 6026
Time Periods: 7
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 211/212
Section: 2E2
Jerome himself reveals by describing a pious young man as “burning daily to make his way to the monasteries of Egypt…or at least to live a lonely life in the Dalmatian islands.”{14} This is why he insists that there was not a blade of grass or a leaf of shade on Bonosus’s island.. . . .
The earliest known example is St. Martin, who lived for a year or two ca. 358 on the island of Gallinaria with a single companion.{15} The generally hostile reaction of urban elites was not unconnected with the fact that deportation to an uninhabited island (relegatio) had long been a standard form of imprisonment for members of the Roman elite.
. . . .
It has been suspected that Martin’s was a case of imprisonment rather than voluntary withdrawal,{18} and it is surely no coincidence that both Jerome and Rutilius introduce prison terms, albeit metaphorically, into their descriptions.
Quote ID: 6085
Time Periods: 45
Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World
Ed. G.W. Bowerrsock, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar
Book ID: 126 Page: 172
Section: 2E2,4B
But away from the stark simplicities of the desert and its holy men who had turned their back on the cities of the Roman world, the accommodation between Christianity and the habits, customs, and social expectations of many in the empire was a vital factor in securing widespread acceptance of the new imperial religion.
Quote ID: 2886
Time Periods: 27
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 81
Section: 2E2
Perhaps in part as a contest of wills with Neoplatonists, who practiced asceticism, many Xns turned to extreme forms of asceticism, dressing in sackcloth, refusing any earthly comforts and pleasures, and even boasting that they never took a bath.
Quote ID: 6138
Time Periods: 345
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 81/82
Section: 2E2
Blesilla, a young woman previously lively and attractive and who once cared about her appearance, was influenced by Jerome to take Xn asceticism farther than her body could endure and died. Her mother, Paula, was overwhelmed with grief, but Jerome rebuked her for the sin of excessive grief and told her that she ought to be happy.
Quote ID: 6139
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 127
Section: 2E2
In practice the most spectacular renunciations of property by members of the upper class in the west came in the first decade of the fifth century, at precisely the time when the state was most threatened by barbarian invasion. In one sense they reflect a kind of withdrawal, a survival of option for the privileged upper class, who could thereby perpetuate their status as patrons in a different form. . . .“
Quote ID: 6155
Time Periods: 5
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 184
Section: 2E2
Asceticism was all the rage in some parts. Many who did not take that path still revered those who did. One Egyptian, Sarapion the loincloth“, refused to wear anything but a loincloth. He sold himself into slavery, converted his masters, traveled as a beggar to Greece and converted at least one pagan at Athens, then went to Rome where he met with at least one notable failure. He could not convince a pious young Xn virgin there to walk naked through the streets to prove to the people that she was dead to the world, as she had claimed.
Quote ID: 6175
Time Periods: 4
Leo the Great, NPNF2 Vol. 12, Leo the Great, Gregory the Great
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 676 Page: 21
Section: 2E2
“The fourth head deals with the fact that the Birth-day of Christ, which the catholic Church thinks highly of as the occasion of His taking on Him true man, because ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt in us’ is not truly honored by these men, though they make a show of honoring it, for they fast on that day, as they do also on the Lord’s day, which is the day of Christ’s resurrection.”
Leo the Great, Letter XV.v.
Quote ID: 9706
Time Periods: 5
Lollards of the Chiltern Hills: Glimpses of English Dissent in the Middle Ages, The
W. H. Summers
Book ID: 248 Page: 88
Section: 2D3B,2E2
Another interesting case (Foxe, iv. 583) is that of a young man named John Ryburn, living at “Roshborough” (Risborough).---------------
Ryburn had eagerly adopted the reformed doctrines, but his family were still devoted to those of Rome. His sister Elizabeth, coming to him on the eve of the Assumption, found him at supper “with butter and eggs,” and was horrified at his inviting her to join him. “God never made such fasting days,” said John; “but you are so far in Umbo patrum that you can never turn again.” At another time she spoke of going on pilgrimage to the Holy Rood of Wendover. “You do wrong,” said John; “for there is never a step that you set in going on pilgrimage but you go to the devil; and you go to church to worship what the priest doth hold above his head, which is but bread, and if you cast it to the mouse, he will eat it; and never will I believe that the priest hath power to make his Lord.”
page 91-192 of new book
Pastor John’s note: AD 1520’s±
Quote ID: 6252
Time Periods: 7
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 420 Page: 33/34
Section: 2E2
…here he proclaims a message of sexual renunciation, in which those who choose the life of chastity will be saved. Thecla is his main convert, who commits herself to Paul’s gospel of abstinence, much to the chagrin of her fiancé and at least one other man in her life.….
Thelca’s own mother pleads for her execution.
Quote ID: 8594
Time Periods: 1
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 420 Page: 35
Section: 2E2
As I have indicated, even though the story of Thecla is not widely known today outside of circles of early Christian scholars and their students, at one time it was extremely popular, with Thecla becoming a cult hero in widespread and often remote regions of Christendom from the third century down to the Middle Ages.
Quote ID: 8595
Time Periods: 34567
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 420 Page: 41
Section: 2E2
As it turns out, it is not Thomas at all but his identical twin, Jesus, who has come down from heaven to persuade the bride and groom to refrain from consummating their marriage: “If you refrain from this filthy intercourse you become temples holy and pure, released from afflictions and troubles, known and unknown, and you will not be involved in the cares of life and of children, whose end is destruction” (Acts of Thomas 12).{22}
Quote ID: 8596
Time Periods: 3
Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 427 Page: 117
Section: 2E2
When she did not answer, her mother Theocleia cried out, “Burn the lawless one! Burn the one who will not be a bride, burn her in the midst of the theater! Then all the wives who have been taught by this one will fear!”The governor was in great agony over the case. He had Paul flogged and cast out of the city; but he ordered Thecla to be burned at the stake.
Quote ID: 8688
Time Periods: 2
Lucretius, On The Nature Of Things, LCL 181: Lucretius
Lucretius
Book ID: 162 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
And see them ev’rywhere wand’ring, all dispersedIn their lone seeking for the road of life;
Rivals in genius, or emulous in rank,
Pressing through days and nights with hugest toil
For Summits of power and mastery of the world.
O wretched minds of men! O blinded hearts!
PJ Note: Search for [the strife of wits] in the better translation at Lucretius, On The Nature Of Things, LCL 181: Lucretius, p. 95.[?]. I do not know why the ref is the same.
Quote ID: 3422
Time Periods: 0
Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Book ID: 297 Page: 167
Section: 2E2
the new role that a celibate woman could play was not so “free”; husbands, fathers, and families still exerted control over celibate women. Most ascetic women in the West in the fourth and early fifth centuries still lived at home or in a home with other women where “they were still expected to follow patterns of modest domesticity.” {161}
Quote ID: 7442
Time Periods: 45
Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Book ID: 297 Page: 168
Section: 2E2
Similarly, Asella, possibly Marcella’s sister and thus probably an aristocrat, was dedicated to virginity by her Christian parents. {169}
Quote ID: 7443
Time Periods: 45
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 13/14
Section: 2E2,4B
A society prepared to vest fellow humans with such powers was ever vigilant. Men watched each other closely for those signs of intimacy with the supernatural that would validate their claim. Holiness itself might be quantifiable. Symeon Stylites, we are told, touched his toes 1,244 times in bowing before God from the top of his column. The true horror of this story lies not in the exertions of the saint, but in the layman who stood there counting. {40}Agents of the supernatural existed and could be seen to exist.
. . . Literary portraiture in the form of biography and autobiography flourished: the Acts of the Martyrs; Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, . . .Athanasius’ Life of Anthony; Augustine’s Confessions. . .
Quote ID: 6273
Time Periods: 23
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 25
Section: 2E2
We meet, in the egregious Peregrinus, the most faithful portrait of a second-century charismatic teacher in the Christian communities, {85} but not Peregrinus the civic benefactor.
Quote ID: 6284
Time Periods: 2
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 80
Section: 2E2
In Egypt, Anthony, the “man of God” had passed through the early trials of his ascetic life before Constantine fought the battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312; Pachomius had founded his first community at Tabennisi a few years before Constantine gained control of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire in 324. In the making of Late Antiquity, the monks of Egypt played a role more enduring than that of Constantine.
Quote ID: 6333
Time Periods: ?
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 83/84
Section: 2E2
“‘He who dwells with brethren’ said Abba Matoes ‘must be not square, but round, so as to turn himself toward all.’ He went on: ‘It is not through virtue that I live in solitude, but through weakness; those who live in the midst of men are the strong ones.’” {8} Yet detachment was out of the question. For economic insecurity, the demands of taxation and the ineluctable discipline of the Water, the need to cooperate in order to control the precious water of the Nile, forced households of natural egotists into constant, humiliating, and friction-laden contact and collaboration with their fellows.
Quote ID: 6334
Time Periods: 234
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 84/85
Section: 2E2
At exactly the same period, however, when farmers might have expected to make their own way, unrestrained by their neighbors, they found themselves thrown back upon each other by the increased weight of taxation, which rested on the village as a whole. Thus, in the generation when the individual might have hoped to “go it alone” more successfully than ever before, the tensions and frictions of communal living reasserted themselves in a particularly abrasive manner. Disengagement, anachoresis, was the reflex reaction of Egyptian farmers in a difficult position.
Quote ID: 6335
Time Periods: 234
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 85
Section: 2E2
In the cities, Christianity had already evolved a language of disengagement. It was in a Christian church that Anthony found an answer to the thoughts which had already begun to trouble him: “He chanced to be on his way to church. As he was walking along, he collected he thoughts and reflected how the Apostles left everything and followed the Savior.” {15} Hence the enduring appeal of the holy man of ascetic origin to the peasant societies of the Late Antique Mediterranean. In his act of anachoresis he had summed up the logical resolution of a dilemma with which the average farmer, and more especially the average successful farmer, could identify himself wholeheartedly:...Pastor John notes: John’s Notes: In other words, he just quit.
Quote ID: 6336
Time Periods: 34
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 86
Section: 2E2
His powers and his prestige came from acting out, heroically, before a society enmeshed in oppressive obligations and abrasive relationships, the role of the utterly self-dependent, autarkic man. {17}
Quote ID: 6337
Time Periods: 234
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 86
Section: 2E2
The anachoresis of the fourth-century hermit took place in a world that was exceptionally sensitive to its social meaning. It was a gesture that had originated in tensions between man and man; and the ascetic message derived its cogency from having resolved those tensions.
Quote ID: 6338
Time Periods: 4
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 93
Section: 2E2
The stance of the monks was a crushing rebuke to the religious style of the pagan world. A studied rejection of the usual manner of wielding power in society from supernatural sources completed the process of anachoresis. The monks sidestepped the ambivalences involved in claims to exercise “heavenly” power in “earthly” regions. They defined “heavenly” power quite simply as power that was not to be used...
Quote ID: 6339
Time Periods: 4
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 101
Section: 2E2
Yet Iamblichus was wrong in one point. The final blow came, not from the philosophical scruples of Porphyry, but from the anachoresis of the monks of Egypt. The new heroes and leaders of the Christian church came to stand between heaven and an earth emptied of the gods.
Quote ID: 6344
Time Periods: 4
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 547
Section: 2E2
He himself believed that the ‘prophetic’ or ‘philosophic’ life, meaning that of the ascetic, was the ‘true citizenship of heaven according to the Gospel’.{62}John’s note: Paul didn’t think so.
. . . .
He had the wit to understand that the ascetic ideal was not one to be confined to the rich and cultivated. The monks of his day he praised as ‘the first order of those pre-eminent in Christ’, but he adds perhaps with reference to Palestine alone, ‘they were few’.{65}
Quote ID: 7691
Time Periods: 4
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 113
Section: 2E2
Christian asceticism certainly predated Christianity.
Quote ID: 3218
Time Periods: 12
Minor Latin Poets, LCL 484: Minor Latin Poets II
Minor Latin Poets
Book ID: 153 Page: 811
Section: 2E2
Rutilius NamatianusA Voyage Home to Gaul Book I
Line 519-526
For lately one of our youths of high descent, with wealth to match, and marriage-alliance equal to his birth, was impelled by madness to forsake mankind and the world, and made his way, a superstitious exile, to a dishonourable hiding-place. Fancying, poor wretch, that the divine can be nurtured in unwashen filth, he was himself to his own body a crueller tyrant than the offended deities. Sure, I ask, this sect is not less powerful than the drugs of Circe? In her days men’s bodies were transformed, now ‘tis their minds’.
Quote ID: 3280
Time Periods: 5
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 153
Section: 2E2,2D1
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.2. Side by side with it, but for the first three centuries confined to a still smaller number of persons{37}, was the tendency to live in partial or total isolation from society.
This, like the ascetic tendency, was not confined to Christianity. It had already taken an important place in the religions of both Egypt and the East.
In Egypt there had been for several centuries a great monastery of those who were devoted to the worship of the deity whom the Greeks called Serapis. The monks, like Christian monks, lived in a vast common building, which they never left:
Quote ID: 6432
Time Periods: 23
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 155
Section: 2E2
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.But great enthusiasms are never adequately explained by external causes. No torch would have kindled so great a conflagration if the fuel had not been already gathered together for the burning. The causes of the sudden outburst of monasticism in the fourth century must be sought, and can be found, within Christianity itself. They lie in the general conditions of the age.
Quote ID: 6433
Time Periods: 4
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 156
Section: 2E2
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class.The age of martyrdoms had ceased, but the spirit of the martyrs began to live again. For martyrdom had been in many cases the choice of a sublime enthusiasm. There had been men and women who, so far from shrinking from it, had sought and welcomed the occasion of it{44}. They had ‘counted it all joy to suffer for His name’s sake.’ All this had come to a sudden end. Persecution had ceased. But the idea of the merit of suffering had not ceased. There were those who, if they could not be martyrs in act, would at least be martyrs in will (Greek words needed here){45}. They sought lives of self-mortification. They would themselves torture the flesh which the lictors would no longer scourge. They would construct for themselves the prisons which no longer kept Christian confessors for the lion.
Quote ID: 6434
Time Periods: 4
Organization of the Early Christian Churches, The
Edwin Hatch, M. A.
Book ID: 255 Page: 158
Section: 2E2
Lecture VI: The Clergy as a Separate Class....but when the Arians set themselves to persecute monasticism, by a remarkable rebound of feeling, monasticism became a protest of catholicity against Arianism{48}.
Quote ID: 6435
Time Periods: 4
Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 30/31
Section: 2E2
Other men in this time (and Marcus himself in other moods) were enabled to endure themselves by making a sharp dichotomy between the self and the body, and diverting their resentment on to the latter. That dichotomy comes, of course, from classical Greece {2}--the most far-reaching, and perhaps the most questionable, of all her gifts to human culture. But in our period it was put to strange uses. Pagans and Christians (though not all pagans or all Christians) vied with each other in heaping abuse on the body; it was ‘clay and gore’, ‘a filthy bag of excrement and urine’; man is plunged in it as in a bath of dirty water. Plotinus appeared ashamed of having a body at all; St Anthony blushed every time he had to eat or satisfy any other bodily function. {3} Because the body’s life was the soul’s death, salvation lay in mortifying it; as a Desert Father expressed it, ‘I am killing it because it was killing me’. {1} The psychophysical unity was split in two not only in theory but in practice; one half found its satisfaction in tormenting the other.
Quote ID: 3499
Time Periods: 4
Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 33
Section: 2E2
Justin Martyr quotes with approval a case of attempted self-castration, and Origen (if we can believe Eusebius) castrated himself while little more than a boy. At a later date such acts were not infrequent among the Desert Fathers; in the fourth century it was found necessary to prohibit them by canon law. {3} Of continuous physical self-torture the lives of the Desert Father provide numerous and repulsive examples.
Quote ID: 3500
Time Periods: 234
Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 34
Section: 2E2
When Tertullian (Praescr. haer., 40) tells us that the Devil too has his virgins and continentes he is probably thinking of the ritual requirements of certain pagan cults--taboo rather than asceticism.
Quote ID: 3501
Time Periods: 23
Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 35
Section: 2E2
but a strong injection of fanatical rigorism had been absorbed into the Church’s system. It lingered there like a slow poison, and (if an outsider can judge) has not yet been expelled from it.
Quote ID: 3502
Time Periods: 234
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 33
Section: 2E2
The way of life that Peregrinus now adopted placed him within a group commonly known as “Cynics” after their founder, Diogenes of Sinope (400-324), who was nicknamed kvwv or “dog,” by his contemporaries {11} Diogenes taught that a man should fulfill his natural needs in the simplest possible way, because nothing that was natural was indecent. He argued that only convention made some natural things dishonorable, and so he taught his followers to avoid convention, to suppress their sense of shame, and to do everything that was natural in public. It is mainly for this reason that he was called a dog.…..
Cynic philosophers wandered around the Hellenistic world teaching, with only a cane in their hands and a knapsack on their backs. In the first and second centuries A.D., they became the main social critics of their day against the overweening ways of the emperors. {12}
Quote ID: 3635
Time Periods: 012
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 34
Section: 2E2
Peregrinus followed in the steps of his Cynic predecessors and sailed to Italy. As soon as he arrived in Rome, he began to criticize everybody and everything, in particular Emperor Antoninus Pius (137-165), who was one of the mildest and most beneficent rulers the empire had ever had.
Quote ID: 3636
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 35
Section: 2E2
By this time, a strange new obsession occupied Peregrinus. He was going to demonstrate in a dramatic, unique way how to have inner strength in the face of adversity and how to defy death. This would be his ultimate lesson to his followers and students, an example that they would never forget. At the Olympic games he announced that four years later at the conclusion of the next games he would burn himself to death.
Quote ID: 3637
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 36
Section: 2E2
The year of the Olympic games arrived, and as usual huge crowds came to watch the contests. This year (165), however, the prospect of the public suicide of Peregrinus added to the excitement.….
Peregrinus stepped forward to the edge of the flaming pit, put down his club, and took off his sack and coat. There he stood for a moment, a sixty-five-year old man clad only in a dirty undershirt – a pitiful sight, indeed. Casting incense on the fire he cried out: “Be gracious to me, gods of my father and my mother!” Then he jumped into the flames and disappeared. {25} Soon the odor of burning flesh began to fill the air.
Quote ID: 3638
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 37
Section: 2E2
In spite of the fact that the Christians had excommunicated Peregrinus, Tertullian mentioned him as an example to would-be martyrs. {27}
Quote ID: 3639
Time Periods: 23
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 39
Section: 2E2
In Lucian’s opinion, Peregrinus had been no more sincere during the Christian phase of his life. He took advantage of the credulous nature of the Christians, whom Lucian characterized with the following words:The poor souls have convinced themselves that they all will be immortal and will live forever, on account of which they think lightly of death and most of then surrender to it voluntarily. Furthermore, their first lawgiver convinced them that they are all each others brothers once they deny the Greek gods, by which they break the laws and worship that crucified sophist and live according to his rules. They despise all thigs and consider them common property, accepting such doctrines by faith alone. So if a cheater who is able to make a profit from the situation comes to them, he quickly becomes rich, laughing at the simple people. {33}
Quote ID: 3640
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 40
Section: 2E2,2C
Again, if a man cares nothing for life or material possession, for him death holds no fear either. “Therefore,” Epictetus continued, “if madness can produce this attitude of mind toward the things which have just been mentioned, and also habit, as with the Galileans, cannot reason and demonstration teach a man that God has made all things in the universe . . .
Quote ID: 3642
Time Periods: 12
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 40
Section: 2E2
The famous medical doctor Galen (ca. 129-199) had a similar opinion. He thought that the Jews and Christians were a simple people, below the level of philosophers. Since demonstrative arguments were too much for them, they based their faith on parables and miracles, and yet some Christians acted in the same way as philosophers, “for their contempt of death is patent to us every day . . . .” {36}
Quote ID: 3643
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 40
Section: 2E2
Tertullian reported that when Arrius Antonius harassed Christians in Asia, Christians from the whole province presented themselves before his judgment seat in one group. He ordered some to be led away to execution, and to the rest he said: “O miserable men, if you wish to die, you have precipices or halters.” {38}
Tertullian angrily rejected these pagan attacks and defended the virtue of the Christians’ contempt of death.
Tertullian pointed out that the pagans had their own heroes who had become famous and venerated by all because of their contempt of death.
…..
Nonetheless, if the pagans could do such things for human reasons, certainly the Christians could do them for God. {39}
…..
Origen defended the Christian attitude toward suffering and death in a similar manner against attacks by the Roman Celsus. Origen argued that when Christians exposed their bodies to torture, they helped to prevent the work of evil demons, and so their sacrifice was not in vain. He wrote: “Indeed we think it both reasonable in itself and well pleasing to God, to suffer pain for the sake of virtue, to undergo torture for the sake of piety, and even to suffer death for the sake of holiness. . . and we maintain that to overcome the love of life is to enjoy a great good.” {40}
Marcus Aurelius [161-180], the philosopher-emperor, has left us a brief but interesting note on Christians, which, if nothing else, at least shows how an emperor, and probably many aristocratic Romans, viewed the new religion and, in particular, the Christian attitude toward death. The note appears in Meditations, a collection of Stoic aphorisms that he composed while fighting Rome’s enemies on the Danube frontier.
What an admirable soul is that which is ready and willing if the time has come to be released from the body, whether that release means extinction, dispersal, or survival. This readiness must be the result of a specific decision; not as with the Christians, of obstinate opposition, but of a reasoned and dignified decision, and without dramatics if it is to convince anyone else. {41}
Quote ID: 3644
Time Periods: 23
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 47
Section: 2E2
Interestingly enough, critics of Christianity like Celsus, used exactly the same phrase to depict the membership of the church. They argued that the Christian Church attracted converts from the untrained and uneducated mass. The church freely admitted this fact, and we have many references to it in early Christian literature. This element of escapism was fully developed in the anchorite movement, the voluntary withdrawal of Christian ascetics from society. {66} The roots of anchoritism and monasticism are manifold (escape for religious, political, or economic reasons was possible), but the actual event was always the same. A man disposed of his material belongings and left his village and his relatives as Peregrinus did. He then moved to the desert away from civilization and settled in the neighborhood of an older hermit to receive his training in self-denial, much in the manner of the Cynics.
Quote ID: 3650
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 48
Section: 2E2
Later, when Christianity emerged as the victor in the Roman world, the church welcomed the Cynics. By the end of the fourth century a bishop in Constantinople, Maximus, even confessed himself to be a Cynic philosopher, and he wore the mantle and staff of the Cynics in public. As pagan Cynicism declined, Christian monasticism increased, and by the sixth century Cynicism as a pagan philosophy had disappeared. Obviously, those who would have been attracted to the Cynic way of life found their place in monasticism.
Quote ID: 3651
Time Periods: 456
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 55
Section: 2E2,2D3B,3A2A
From Minucius Felix Octavius. Caecilius speaking against Christians:Who, having gathered together from the lowest dregs the more unskilled, and women, credulous and, by the facility of their sex, yielding, establish a herd of a profane conspiracy, which is leagued together by nightly meetings, and solemn fasts, and unhuman meats – not by any sacred rite, but that which requires expiation – a people skulking and shunning the light, silent in public, but garrulous in corners. They despise the temples as dead-houses, they reject the gods, they laugh at sacred things; wretched, they pity, if they are allowed, the priests; half naked themselves, they despise honours and purple robes. Oh, wondrous folly and incredible audacity! They despise present torments, although they fear those which are uncertain and future; and while they fear to die after death, they do not fear to die or the present: so does a deceitful hope sooth their fear with the solace of a revival.
And now, as wickeder things advance more fruitfully, and abandoned manners creep on day by day, those abominable shrines of an impious assembly are maturing themselves throughout the whole world. Assuredly this confederacy ought to be rooted out and eradicated. They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and the love one another almost before the know one another. Everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust, and they call one another promiscuously brothers and sisters.
Quote ID: 3653
Time Periods: 2
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 142
Section: 2E2
. . . Galen criticized both Judaism and Christianity. There are four references to Christians in Galen’s writings.
For their contempt of death (and of its sequel) is patent to us every day, and likewise their restraint in cohabitation. For they include not only men but also women who refrain from cohabitating all through their lives; and they also number individuals who, in self-discipline and self-control in matters of food and drink, and in their keen pursuit of justice, have attained a pitch not inferior to that of genuine philosophers. {5}
Quote ID: 3666
Time Periods: 23
Paganism and Christianity 100-425 C.E. a Sourcebook
Ramsay MacMullen and Eugene N. Lane
Book ID: 170 Page: 83
Section: 2E2
One man cuts off his virile parts and another slashes his arms. What can they fear from the wrath of the gods when they use such means to win their favor? Moreover, gods deserve no worship coli debent of any kind if they want this kind. So great is the frenzy of a disordered and unsettled mind that means are used to placate the gods that have never been employed even by the most horrible men whose cruelty is recorded in myth and legend . . .….
If anyone has leisure to view what they do and what they suffer, he will find practices so indecent for honorable men, so unworthy of free men, so unlike those of sane men, that if their number were fewer, no one would have any doubt that they were demented. As it is, the only support for a plea of sanity is found in the number of the mad throng.”
Quote ID: 3684
Time Periods: 234
Paganism and Christianity 100-425 C.E. a Sourcebook
Ramsay MacMullen and Eugene N. Lane
Book ID: 170 Page: 139
Section: 2E2,2C
But the hierophant was not disposed to admit him to the rites, for he said that he would never initiate a wizard and charlatan, nor open the Eleusinian rite to a man who dabbled in impure rites.
Quote ID: 3686
Time Periods: 0
Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 73
Section: 2E2
Or we can compare another tourist at Atargatis’s shrine, seeing the pillar saints atop their pillars, “whom hoipolloi believe to be up there in the company of the gods, requesting benefits for the whole of Syria.”
Quote ID: 3721
Time Periods: 23
Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 129
Section: 2E2
The sense might be challenged: “What sort of religion is it that takes money?” asked the Apologists in derision (above, pp. 96-97). A fair question – if it is also fair to ask, What is especially good about a religion that costs nothing? Why should the hollow-cheeked St. Anthony stare down the Buddha? Eating and drinking may be a form of worship, and dancing and singing, building and painting, writing and reading.
Quote ID: 3769
Time Periods: 23
Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 18
Section: 2E2,4A
In Alexandria, Hilarion’s schoolmasters are said to have admired his gift for rhetoric, but before he could follow the usual career as a pagan speaker and public figure, he abandoned his school. Aged fifteen, he is said to have struck into Egypt’s desert to find Antony, the Coptic-speaking Christian hermit. After two months in Antony’s company, he is said to have returned to his home village and promptly given away his property.
Quote ID: 3825
Time Periods: 4
Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 20
Section: 2D3B,2E2
When the pagan Emperor Julian came to power, people in Gaza are said to have petitioned for the hermit’s prompt arrest: there was no love lost between a Christian holy man and pagans who still sat on the town council. However, Hilarion was away visiting Antony in Egypt. From there, he went by camel to Libya and by boat to Sicily, where he prophesied and caused great trouble to the local demons. Then he sailed slowly eastwards round Greece to Cyprus, where he died, aged eighty, to the usual Christian wrangle over his relics and the pieces of his body.
Quote ID: 3826
Time Periods: 4
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 72
Section: 4A,2E2
The rise to prominence of Christian monks was a warning signal.
Quote ID: 4049
Time Periods: 4
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 73
Section: 4A,2E2
The monks could utter the gros mots that broke the spell of paideia. As tutor to the sons of Theodosius I, Arsenius would have known the aging philosopher Themistius, his colleague at the court. He fled from the palace of Constantinople to Egypt, to save his soul. Over a decade later he emerged from the hermitages of the Wadi Natrun...
Quote ID: 4050
Time Periods: 4
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 73
Section: 4A,2E2
He had once represented the prestige of paideia at the imperial court. Now he hung on the words of his spiritual guide, an elderly Egyptian: “I knew Greek and Latin learning. But I have not yet learned the ABC with this peasant.”{11}
Quote ID: 4051
Time Periods: 4
Prokopios: The Secret History: With Related Texts
Edited and translated by Anthony Kaldellis
Book ID: 334 Page: 9
Section: 2E2
But there Theodosios became self-conscious and lost his nerve. His mind twisted this way and that as he reasoned that the affair couldn’t stay secret forever, and he saw that the woman was no longer able to dissimulate her infatuation or indulge in it secretly. She was apparently unconcerned that she was behaving openly as an adulteress or even that she was being called one. {37} So again he fled to Ephesos, taking the tonsure as is the custom for those who wish to enroll among the “monks” (as they are known), which is what he did.Pastor John’s note: After committing adultery with Antonina, the wife of Belisarios, he was afraid.
Quote ID: 7828
Time Periods: 6
Prokopios: The Secret History: With Related Texts
Edited and translated by Anthony Kaldellis
Book ID: 334 Page: 17
Section: 2E2
Three more years passed for Photios in this condition, at which point the prophet Zacharias appeared to him in a dream and bid him to flee, promising with oaths to facilitate his escape. {28} Trusting in this apparition, he emerged from that hole and reached Jerusalem, evading capture even though myriads of people were searching for him. Yet none of them actually noticed the young man, even when they were right next to him. {29} He there took the tonsure and adopted the habit of the men who are called “monks,” managing in this way to escape the wrath of Theodora.Pastor John notes: John’s note: To be safe from Theodora.
Quote ID: 7829
Time Periods: 6
Roman Social Relations
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 188 Page: 34
Section: 2E2,4B
But peasants were afflicted by an affliction worse than locusts, worse than drought: the man from the city, come to collect rents or taxes.“Before the grain-tax is delivered, the poll-tax falls due.” {21} “The cities are set up by the state in order . . . to extort and oppress.” {22} So say our sources for Palestine, and truly. ...
Farmers could only defend themselves by a kind of economic suicide: If your demands drive us to desperation, they said to the officials, then we will flee our fields and you will get no yield at all. {24} It was no empty threat. ...
We will defer till later the discussion of these laborers and pass over the many studies of anachoresis, meaning flight from one’s fields, village, debts, and creditors in Egypt.
Quote ID: 4150
Time Periods: 123
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 88
Section: 2E2,4B
Gregory showed considerable aptitude for administration and for justice, and by 573 had risen to the highest civil post in Rome, that of prefect of the city. But that same disillusion with the continuance of normal conditions which sent so many of his relations and contemporaries into the contemplative or monastic life affected him also, and about 578 he abandoned the civil career and formed in his parents’ house a monastic community.To the Roman nobility this was nothing strange. Before the Gothic wars the monasteries of Italy were frequently under the patronage, as centres of learning, of the great men of the city. But this class was dying out, their estates had no heirs, and the last members of the families were turning themselves to the service of religion. Gregory himself described such an occasion when Galla, one of the noblest women in Rome--the daughter of the murdered Symmachus and sister of Boethius’ widow Rusticiana-- made this decision although she was the last heiress of an ancient family.
Quote ID: 4295
Time Periods: 6
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 98
Section: 2E2,4B
He then relates the wonders of the great upsurge of the monastic life that had overtaken Italy in the sixth century, an upsurge that embraced all walks of life from the nobles who gave estates and patronage to the religious houses to the peasants and Goths who turned to the service of God in a crumbling world - an upsurge whose dominant representative was St. Benedict.The Dialogues and the histories they present point to the changes in Roman thinking.
Quote ID: 4308
Time Periods: 6
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The
Benedita Ward, SLG
Book ID: 267 Page: 42
Section: 2E2
Abba Bessarion said, ‘For fourteen days and nights, I have stood upright in the midst of thorn bushes, without sleeping.’
Quote ID: 6738
Time Periods: 4
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The
Benedita Ward, SLG
Book ID: 267 Page: 44
Section: 2E2
Someone questioned Abba Biare in these words, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ He replied, ‘Go reduce your appetite and your manual work, dwell without care in your cell and you will be saved.’
Quote ID: 6739
Time Periods: 4
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The
Benedita Ward, SLG
Book ID: 267 Page: 62
Section: 2E2
It was said of Abba Helladius that he spent twenty years in the Cells, without ever raising his eyes to see the roof of the church.
Quote ID: 6740
Time Periods: 4
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The
Benedita Ward, SLG
Book ID: 267 Page: 116
Section: 2E2
Carion was a married man, an Egyptian, with a wife and two children. He left his family in order to become a monk in Scetis.
Quote ID: 6741
Time Periods: 4
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The
Benedita Ward, SLG
Book ID: 267 Page: 197
Section: 2E2
He also said, ‘The monk should wear a garment of such a kind that he could throw it out of his cell and no-one would steal it from him for three days.’....
He was greater than many others in that if he was asked to interpret part of the Scriptures or a spiritual saying, he would not reply immediately, but he would say he did not know that saying. If he was asked again, he would say no more.
Quote ID: 6742
Time Periods: 4
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The
Benedita Ward, SLG
Book ID: 267 Page: 205
Section: 2E2
It was said of Abba Paul that he spent the whole of Lent eating only one measure of lentils, drinking one small jug of water, and working at one single basket, weaving it and unweaving it, living alone until the feast.
Quote ID: 6743
Time Periods: 34
Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 109
Section: 2E2
Part II: Studies 2. The Evidence of OrigenThe other place where Sextus is named occurs in Origen’s Commentary on St Matthew XV, 3, where he is expounding the problematic text Matt. XiX. 12: ‘There are eunuchs who were so born from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.’
Quote ID: 6806
Time Periods: 3
Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 110
Section: 2E2
Part II: Studies 2. The Evidence of OrigenJustin Martyr found a powerful argument to refute the vulgar accusation that Christians met to indulge in gross and immoral practices in a story about a youthful Christian of Egypt who had so deep a desire for bodily purity that he had asked the local surgeons to emasculate him. Castration being contrary to Roman law, the surgeons refused to perform the operation without the permission of the prefect Felix. {3} A formal application was made through the official channels of the civil service; but a permit was not forthcoming, and the young man had to content himself as he was.
Quote ID: 6807
Time Periods: 2
Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 111
Section: 2E2
Part II: Studies 2. The Evidence of OrigenFor example, the first canon of Nicaea prohibits those who have been mutilated, where it has not been necessitated by medical reasons, from being ordained, ….
. . . .
Nothing however is there said of the need to curb lay enthusiasm; the Nicene fathers were only concerned with castration as a bar to ordination. In the 23rd of the Apostolic Canons, however, it is laid down that a layman who mutilates himself is to be excommunicated for three years, ‘for he conspires against his own life’.
. . . .
Nevertheless, among the monks the practice was not so very rare. It is violently attacked by St. John Chrysostom as a current abuse. {2} Epiphanius comments that in the Egyptian desert ‘not a few monks went so far as to castrate themselves’. {3}
Quote ID: 6808
Time Periods: 4
Sulpicius Severus, The Life of Martin of Tours
Editor, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace
Book ID: 700 Page: 7
Section: 2E2
“Martin, then, having gone on from thence, after he had passed Milan, the devil met him in the way, having assumed the form of a man. The devil first asked him to what place he was going. Martin having answered him to the effect that he was minded to go whithersoever the Lord called him, the devil said to him, “Wherever you go, or whatever you attempt, the devil will resist you.” Then Martin, replying to him in the prophetical word, said, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man can do unto me.” Upon this, his enemy immediately vanished out of his sight; and thus, as he had intended in his heart and mind, he set free his mother from the errors of heathenism, though his father continued to cleave to its evils. However, he saved many by his example.”*PJ Reference: The Life of Martin of Tours, VI.*
Quote ID: 9870
Time Periods: 4
Sulpicius Severus, The Life of Martin of Tours
Editor, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace
Book ID: 700 Page: 14
Section: 2E2
“It is also well known that angels were very often seen by him, so that they spoke in turns with him in set speech. As to the devil, Martin held him so visible and ever under the power of his eyes, that whether he kept himself in his proper form, or changed himself into different shapes of spiritual wickedness, he was perceived by Martin, under whatever guise he appeared. The devil knew well that he could not escape discovery, and therefore frequently heaped insults upon Martin, being unable to beguile him by trickery. On one occasion the devil, holding in his hand the bloody horn of an ox, rushed into Martin’s cell with great noise, and holding out to him his bloody right hand, while at the same time he exulted in the crime he had committed, said: “Where, O Martin, is thy power? I have just slain one of your people.” Then Martin assembled the brethren, and related to them what the devil had dis- closed, while he ordered them carefully to search the several cells in order to discover who had been visited with this calamity. They report that no one of the monks was missing, but that one peasant, hired by them, had gone to the forest to bring home wood in his wagon. Upon hearing this, Martin instructs some of them to go and meet him. On their doing so, the man was found almost dead at no great distance from the monastery. Nevertheless, al- though just drawing his last breath, he made known to the brethren the cause of his wound and death. He said that, while he was drawing tighter the thongs which had got loose on the oxen yoked together, one of the oxen, throwing his head free, had wounded him with his horn in the groin. And not long after the man expired. You36 see with what judgment of the Lord this power was given to the devil. This was a marvelous feature in Martin that not only on this occasion to which I have specially referred, but on many occasions of the same kind, in fact as often as such things occurred, he perceived them long beforehand, and37 disclosed the things which had been revealed to him to the brethren.”*PJ Reference: The Life of Martin of Tours, XXI*
*PJ Footnote: Sulpicius Severus, The Life of Martin of Tours, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Vol. 11, Sulpicius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian, A Select Library of the Christian Church Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1995).*
Quote ID: 9871
Time Periods: 4
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
Next the Emperor brought forward a motion for the election of a Vestal Virgin {59} in the room of Occia, who for fifty-seven years had presided with the most immaculate virtue over the Vestal worship.. . . .
…the same husband, while Agrippa had impaired the honor of his house by a divorce. The Emperor consoled his daughter, passed over through she was, with a dowry of a million sesterces.
Quote ID: 7497
Time Periods: 0
Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 191
Section: 2E2
chapter XLII
But there is another charge of wrong-doing upon the sheet against us. We are said to be unprofitable in business. How so – when we are human beings and live alongside of you – men with the same ways, the same dress and furniture, the same necessities, if we are to live? For we are not Brahmans, naked sages of India, forest-dwellers, exiles from life.{a}
Quote ID: 2968
Time Periods: 23
Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 227
Section: 2E2
chapter L
Who, on inquiry, does not join us, and joining us, does not wish to suffer, that he may purchase for himself the whole grace of God, that he may win full pardon from God by paying his own blood for it? For all sins are forgiven to a deed like this.
PJ: Apology, L.15
Quote ID: 2974
Time Periods: 23
The Complete Palladas
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 8776
Time Periods: 4
The Complete Palladas
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 9772
Time Periods: 4
The Complete Palladas
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 9778
Time Periods: 4
The Complete Palladas
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 9793
Time Periods: 4
The Complete Palladas
Palladas. Translated by Harold A. Lloyd
Book ID: 433 Page: 45
Section: 2E2
11-384
How can a monk withdraw in groups from life?
A crowd of “solitaries” is a lie.
Quote ID: 9878
Time Periods: 4
Theodora: Empress of Byzantium
Paolo Cesaretti
Book ID: 281 Page: 182
Section: 3E,2E2
The anchorites were seen as variations or metamorphoses of the ancient role of “philosopher,” and their unique status brought them complete freedom of speech and action (parrhêsia) with respect to the emperors, freedoms that were not permitted to others. They did not worship the Augusti but were worshipped by them. Magistrates prostrated themselves before emperors, but emperors knelt before ascetics.
Quote ID: 7037
Time Periods: 6
Theodora: Empress of Byzantium
Paolo Cesaretti
Book ID: 281 Page: 183/184
Section: 3E,2E2
Mār the Solitary, a Monophysite ascetic monk who had come to the capital under the protection of Theodora, was welcomed by both rulers together, but he did not do homage to them or even give them any respect. He didn’t even change out of his usual ragged tunic for the occasion: its repulsive smell was proof of his devotion and his celebrated mortification. Mār the Solitary was not old as Sabas: he was a vigorous man, an imposing figure, “an athlete of God” with tremendous physical strength. One of his biographers wrote that he was stronger “than ten criminals.” {27}The Solitary did not come to the palace to bless or admire anyone, but to chastise. He reproached the rulers for their religious policy which he believed was hostile to the Monophysites, despite Theodora’s position. And he did not just blame them: he insulted them, wounding them so deeply that the biographer’s quill hesitated to specify how. Protocol, the crown, and the purple mantle meant nothing to this anchorite, accustomed as he was to the emptiness of his lonely retreat in the desert.
His parrhêsia was met with surprising calm and majesty, like that of the ancient emperors—like Marcus Aurelius’s calm with Herodes Atticus. The rulers were not disturbed. They said: “This man is truly a spiritual philosopher,”…
Quote ID: 7038
Time Periods: 6
Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, The
The Geoffrey Chaucer Page
Book ID: 275 Page: 2
Section: 2E2
The Third Conclusion: Clerical CelibacyThe Third Conclusion, sorrowful to hear, is: That the law of continence annexed to priesthood, that in prejudice of women was first ordained, induces sodomy in Holy Church; but we excuse us by the Bible, for the suspect decree that says we should not name it. Reason and experience prove this conclusion,
….
Experience for the privy assay of such men is that they like not women.
Quote ID: 6943
Time Periods: 7
Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, The
The Geoffrey Chaucer Page
Book ID: 275 Page: 7
Section: 2E2
The Eleventh Conclusion: Female Vows of Continence and AbortionThe eleventh conclusion is shameful for to speak: that a vow of continence made in our church of women,
Quote ID: 6947
Time Periods: 7
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 6
Section: 2E2
To make vows of perpetual continence, and to drag out a life of self-denial and mortification, may be necessary and praiseworthy upon some occasions, but are celibacy and asceticism to be exalted, as they have been, above all Christian virtues?
Quote ID: 7197
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 137/138
Section: 2E2
But a blight was cast over the well-spent life of Sulpicius when that evil counsellor, Martin of Tours, persuaded him, that all his benevolent and pious actions would not enable him to escape the everlasting fire reserved for the wicked, unless he made for himself a Gehenna and Inferno {*} upon earth, by the practice of the most rigid penances. Under the influence of such baneful advice, Sulpicius began to convert a household of faith into a scene of the grossest superstition. He denied himself the necessaries of life; he exhausted his strength by long fastings and devotional exercises, which lasted through the greater part of the twenty-four hours of every day; he tore his body with scourges, and invented new modes of self-punishment. When these inflictions failed to bring him peace of mind, he redoubled his contributions to charitable purposes, and thought to purchase a sure interest in heaven by alms-deeds which exceeded all that he had done before. But he was still goaded on to make further sacrifices, and was exhorted never to be satisfied with himself until he had sold all and given to the poor. {*}. . . .
This proceeded from want of faith, and he resorted to the extremes of self-denial as a means of making satisfaction for his sins, because he did not place true reliance on, or feel security in his Saviour’s atonement. He did not look to his Redeemer for the full and entire expiation of his sins, but adopted the belief, that the ransom was incomplete without some sufferings of his own, and that the uttermost farthing of his debt to an inexorable God could not be paid, so long as he enjoyed one earthly comfort. {ᾠ}
Quote ID: 7199
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 139/140
Section: 2E2
The letter proceeds to informs us, that the display of grandeur, common in the mansions of persons of his rank, was not to be seen in that of Sulpicius. No festal halls were there, no rich tapestry, no gold and silver plate, but it was filled with multitudes of poor pilgrims, whilst he himself he himself occupied only a small corner of it. He treated his servants as if they were his companions, waiting upon them like a menial, and scarcely letting it appear that he was the head of the family. He considered his house as only lent to him, and endeavored to pay the hire of it to Jesus Christ, by the service he rendered to the poor for his sake. {*}Pastor John notes: John’s note: Wow!
Another letter of Paulinus, written long afterwards, describes the happy household of Sulpicius, made so by the constant amiability of their master; happy in every thing except the consciousness that the head of the family, who treated them more like his nearest relatives than his dependents, was himself tormented by a perpetual distrust of his own spiritual condition.
Pastor John notes: John’s note: Oh no!
Quote ID: 7200
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 141/142
Section: 2E2
‘Can that system be right, which perverts the understanding, inflames the imagination, and tortures the body and mind of such a man, as this generous master of mine? The dignified senator is urged to abandon his post of duty: the influential noble, whose pure and blameless life, in the midst of corrupt society, might preach Christianity with persuasive eloquence, and make converts every day, is told to shut himself up in a cell, and to hide his light under a bushel. The professed follower of Him, who promised refreshment and rest unto those, who should adopt his religion, is directed by his ghostly adviser Martin of Tours to place some new yoke upon his neck, heavy to carry, and hard to bear.’The more Vigilantius loved and reverenced Sulpicius, the more dissatisfied would he be, with the system, which never allowed a really pious man to be at rest in his conscience, but filled him with doubts and misgivings, as to the safety of his soul, so long as he indulged in the most innocent earthly enjoyments, and reserved any thing to be called his own out of his princely patrimony.
Quote ID: 7202
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 151
Section: 2E2
footnote *‘The garments of the monks were never changed or washed, but were worn until they dropped to pieces.’ - Hieron. in vita Hilar
Quote ID: 7203
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 151/152/153/154/155
Section: 2E2
Not a living being besides themselves appeared within the cell, and it was some time before Sulpicius could muster resolution to ask the saint with whom he had been holding discourse. At first Martin declined to make any reply, but after some importunity on the part of his interrogator, he consented to satisfy his curiosity, on condition that the secret should be disclosed to others. ‘I will tell you then,’ said the holy man, ‘Agnes and Thecla and Mary {*} have been with me.’ He then described their countenances and appearance of their raiment. He added that the apostles Peter and Paul {ᾠ} often favoured him with their presence, and that angels of light descended from heaven to converse with him; and the powers of darkness assailed him more virulently after these interviews with the glorified of the Lord, ‘Hark they are coming! but be not ye alarmed, I will put them to flight. I will rebuke them, and send them back to their accursed abodes. Belial, {‡} away! I fear the not, foul fiend, depart from me! Moloch, fire-demon, return to thine own place, - they burning breath, and the flames that issue from thy mouth, cannot scorch me! Lucifer thou art fallen, and I will not be carried with thee to the bottomless pit. Away, prince of this world! I am not Balaam, think not that you are to contend for my body, - I am not thy prey.’ Martin’s horrified visitors were half dead with terror, while the saint continued to accost and defy one demon after another by name, as if they were really assailing him, and his action corresponded with his words. His countenance expressed anger and disdain. Sometimes he rushed towards the door, as if he were driving the adversary before him, and then he would stand erect, and wave his hand with a commanding air, as if that movement only was sufficient to rid him of the intruder. This extraordinary scene continued for some time. It then seemed as if he was exposed to the attack of a new enemy, and that the heathen gods {*} were joining in the conflict. ‘Mercury!’ exclaimed the saint, ‘thinkest thou, that I do not know thee under that shape? Thy Proteus form is too familiar to me to be mistaken. Licentious messenger of uncleanness, thou art the most persevering of my foes: but away with thee! I am proof against thy malice. And thou too, once mighty Jove, thinkest thou that thy frowns have any terrors for Martin? They reign is over, thy forked lightenings cannot reach me; thy thunderbolt fall harmless at my feet; way to Pandemonium!’ {ᾠ}Pastor John’s Note: Demons. Madness.
. . . .
Here they passed the night, not in quiet and refreshing sleep, but harassed with dreams, and waking visions, in which they were haunted by the image of Martin, contending with the fiends and false gods, who, according to his disordered imagination, had been arrayed against him. The next day Sulpicius and Vigilantius made acquaintance with some of the monks, who had retired to this place, for the purposes of penitence and devotion. Many of them were men of noble birth, who had abandoned affluence and comfort, to put themselves under the guidance of the Bishop of Tours, and to submit implicitly to his rules.
. . . .
These Cenobites were divided into eight companies of ten each, {*} over whom one presided: for obedience and subjection were the great principles which bound them together. Until certain hours they remained alone, each shut up in his own cell, and none moved out except the chief of each class. At prescribed times they met together. Prayers were offered up, psalms were snug, and scripture was read. When they took their meals, by decades at the same table, not a word was spoken. Their food consisted of bread, vegetables and olives; salt was their only seasoning. After they retired to their solitary chambers or caverns for the night, the priors of each class went their rounds, and made their observations. They listened and inspected, and if the monks performed their devotions carelessly or infrequently, they were reported to Martin, who gently exhorted and rebuked them. Everything in the shape of recreation seemed to be banished from this society of ascetics; but they kept up a perpetual state of excitement by vying with each other who should fast the longest, - who should continue the most perseveringly in a painful posture of supplication, - who should devise a more uncomfortable and new texture of hair-cloth to irritate his skin, -who should relate the most extravagant vision, and who should come nearest to Martin in preternatural performances and pretensions.
Quote ID: 7204
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 156/157
Section: 2E2
The general effect produced upon the fraternity was “to believe a lie,” and to magnify everything into a miracle, until they worked themselves up into a pitch of absolute insanity. If one of them saw a distant object indistinctly in the gloom of the evening, or heard some strange noise amidst the wild roar of the tempest, which swept through the forest, and asked another what it could be, the answer was, “It is an angel of light come to strengthen us in our trials:” or, “It is a spirit of darkness sent to tempt, or to buffet us.” The inducement to exaggerate, to tell a tale of wonder, to see visions, and to dream dreams, became more and ore infectious.
Quote ID: 7205
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 159/160
Section: 2E2
The monk and the chafing-dish, Brictio and the incident which I have just now related, show how much Martin rose above his contemporaries in decorum and benevolence, while he was still far below the Gospel standard of truth and single-mindedness.
Quote ID: 7206
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 161/162
Section: 2E2
After his return home, the image of Martin haunted the sensitive historian: he was pursued by the recollection of the ascetic prelate sleeping on the cold earth, with nothing but ashes strewed beneath him, and covered with sackcloth only; refusing a softer bed, or warmer clothing, even in severe illness; declaring that a Christian ought to die on ashes; {*} feeding on the most unwholesome food, and denying himself every indulgence; praying in the most irksome posture, forcing sleep from his eyes, and exposing himself to the extremes of heat and cold, hunger and thirst.[Footnote *] Epist. Sulp. Sev. ad Bassulam.
Quote ID: 7207
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 162/163/164
Section: 2E2
The sackcloth and ashes, the exposure to cold, and hunger, and want of sleep, the sufferings imposed by way of penance, and the rejection of necessaries of life, which he saw carried to excess, implied a belief that the sacrifice of Christ was not a sufficient satisfaction for the sins of man; that man must therefore inflict some sufferings upon himself to supply the deficiency, to appease the unpropitiated wrath of God, and in a sense unknown to scripture, “to fill up what is behind the afflictions of Christ.” He perceived also in the second place, that Sulpicius, magnifying the merits of such as could inflict the severest sufferings upon themselves, and elevating them in his own mind to a rank far above any human example of holiness and virtue, yielded a blind faith to all they said and commanded. Hence his credulity on the subject of Martin’s professed miracles, and his obedience to that bishop’s rules of discipline. Because Martin had great powers of endurance, he must therefore be pre-eminently holy: and because he was pre-eminently holy, nothing that he related of his own performances could be considered incredible. Thus Vigilantius saw on one side vain-glorious exaltation, spiritual pride, and pretension to miraculous power; and on the other side, a false humility and prostration of the understanding, both growing out of the same mistaken system of asceticism: a system which underminded the doctrine of Christ’s full and sufficient sacrifice, an assigned and undue value to the inflictions and performances of men like Martin of Tours: and which he probably foresaw would in the end elevate them in the minds of weak brethren, to the mediatorial thrones, and render them little less than objects of divine worship.
Quote ID: 7208
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 165/166
Section: 2E2,4B
In the fourth century, intercourse by letters was not usually carried on by public means of conveyance, as it is now; but epistles were conveyed privately, at such opportunities as the occasional journeys of friends or domestics might offer. The same traveller was frequently the bearer of oral messages, and of written communications to many persons on the whole line of his route; and this gave him admission to houses, and the advantage of an hospitable reception from the beginning to the end of his journey. It was necessarily a confidential trust, and none were likely to be so employed, but those who were in every degree worthy of being admitted to the intimacy of the parties in correspondence.. . . .
It is in this character that Vigilantius next appears before us, in the year 394. He was sent by Sulpicius with a companion into Campania to Paulinus of Nola,...
Pastor John notes:
Quote ID: 7209
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 173
Section: 2E2
Of all this public homage, rendered to one of the most celebrated fathers of Christian idolatry, Vigilantius was witness. He loved the man, he heard him discourse, as sophists and fanatics can discourse, in honied accents, of the lawfulness of mixing up heathen rites with Christian observances, and yet his mind remained unpolluted.
Quote ID: 7212
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 175
Section: 2E2
Very different was its present appearance from that of the Roman palace, the ancient seat of his ancestors, wherein baths and banqueting halls, and spacious rooms for theatrical entertainments occupied the two stories, which were now converted into small cells and dormitories. One side of the building was set apart for his brother monks, and the other for the accommodation of his visitors, the worldly-minded people, as he called all those who did not adopt his own mode of living.Tugurium, or cottage, was the name he gave to the transformed villa. The ample pleasure-ground had also undergone an entire change; the fountains and statues had disappeared; the flowers, which emitted sweet odours, and shone in brilliant colours, were thought too luxurious for the senses of persons devoted to religion: an orchard, and a cabbage-garden were all that were reserved to regale a fraternity of the elect of God. {ᾠ}
Quote ID: 7213
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 176
Section: 2E2
They rose at an appointed hour, and celebrated the office of matins at daybreak: at stated times they had daily services in the church, and every evening, vespers were performed with punctual regularity. At midnight there was also a call to prayer, which was obeyed by all who were in health. Paulinus would seldom allow himself to be so unwell as to be absent from the scene of nocturnal devotion.
Quote ID: 7214
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 180
Section: 2E2
Paulinus proceeds to describe the bearing and appearance of those who reached his standard of excellence, and to compare them with the deportment and garb of such as he disliked. ‘I love to receive the visits of those who serve God as we do, and whose religious character is visible in their pallid faces,.... . . .
. . .but of those, who for the sake of holy deformity, wear their hair short and badly cut, . . . .who live in honourable disregard and neglect of the niceties of life: . . . .who purposely disfigure themselves, and suffer their faces to be haggard, that their hearts may be clean.
. . . .
. . .not from those whose heads reel under the fumes of wine, but of those on whom pious vigils have inflicted holy wounds, and caused a sober intoxication, and who stagger not from repletion, but from inanition. {*}
Quote ID: 7215
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 183
Section: 2E2
In another letter {ᾠ} Paulinus mentions very pleasantly some instructions which Victor, who had been sent to him from Sulpicius, had given him for living with more simplicity and economy.. . . .
. . .that he never plagued himself about fire-wood, for he took and threw into the fire everything he found about the house, and for that purpose he would make no hesitation in uncovering the roof and tearing up the old planks. {§}
Quote ID: 7216
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 185
Section: 2E2
I have already produced an example of this contagious fanaticism in the case of Sulpicius, when he fancied he saw a demoniac suspended in the air, after he had been listening to some of Martin’s narrations; and now Vigilantius had a second opportunity of observing how a similar delusion affected Paulinus.
Quote ID: 7217
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 204
Section: 2E2
I cannot distinctly make out when Vigilantius was ordained priest. Gennadius, {*} who flourished about a century afterwards,.... . . .
. . .he was banished from Gaul, for writing against the corruptions of the church.
Quote ID: 7218
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 231
Section: 2E2
Vigilantius, A.D. 396, was the bearer of a letter from Paulinus to Jerome, and this was the introduction which made him personally acquainted with the most extraordinary man of that age. Jerome was the terror of his contemporaries; the man above all others, who, in a mistaken attempt to do his duty to God, failed most signally in his duty towards men, unmindful of the Apostle’s words “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar,” {t &c.} The mortification of the flesh had tended to puff up his spirit, and of all the polemical writers of the 4th century, he was the most bitter and severe.
Quote ID: 7223
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 232/233/234
Section: 2E2
The glowing descriptions of Bethlehem and of the holy company of saints assembled there, which had been written by Jerome himself, and under Jerome’s direction by Paula and Eustochium, {*} and others, must have been known to the Gallic traveller, and made his heart warm not only to the place, but to those also who sojourned there. These were represented to be the choicest spirits of the age; the good, the learned, the pious, and the accomplished, who were drawn from all parts of the world in hope of becoming wiser, better, and more devout in Palestine.. . . .
. . .the hallowed localities of Judea were equally and even still more dear to Christians, who longed to be where the patriarchs and apostles had received inspiration from above.
. . . .
‘Their tongues are different, but they have only one form of religion. Here are choirs composed of all nations, and there is no speech nor language, in which the singers do not pour forth their sacred melodies. In the midst of Christianity, there is no assumption of superiority, no supercilious pride which says, “I am more continent than thou.” The only contention is who shall be the humblest. The last is the first. No distinction of dress is seen here; no admiration is expressed; do as you will, you will neither be censured nor praised. The excess of fasting will not raise you in the estimation of others; no deference is paid to exhaustion after long abstinence, {*} and temperate satiety is not condemned. To his own Master every one standeth or falleth: no one judgeth another, lest he be judged of God. The slander and gossip which are common to other countries are totally unknown here. There is no luxury, no indulgence; on the contrary there are so many shrines and oratories, that you cannot offer up your devotions at them all in one day.’ {ᾠ}
This beautiful picture of harmony and peace was drawn about six years before Vigilantius visited Bethlehem; but the visions of Christian loveliness and charity, which had floated before his eyes during his journey, were chased away by his eyes during his journey, were chased away by coming into collision with persons, who tempers had been soured, and whose good dispositions had been perverted by the very expedients adopted as the safeguards of virtue.
Quote ID: 7224
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 235/236/237/238
Section: 2E2
The aspect of Bethlehem on entering the village was that of holy ground. Every building seemed dedicated to religion, and Vigilantius saw at a glance that it would require many hours to visit the churches, and shrines, and monasteries, which presented themselves before him.{‡} The grove of Adonis and the temple of Venus no longer desecrated this hallowed ground; the cross now stood where emblems of impurity had been erected by the Emperor Hadrian. {*}A narrow bye path leading off from the street, at the spot where the tomb of King Archelaus formerly stood, conducted the traveller to the cell of Jerome; here he found the ascetic clad in a vestment of coarse and sordid, {ᾠ} that its very vileness bore the stamp of spiritual pride, and seemed to say, “Stand off, my wearer is holier than thou.” The face of the monk was pale and haggard. He had been slowly recovering from a severe illness, and was wasted to a shadow. Frequent tears had ploughed his cheeks with deep furrows; {‡} his eyes were sunk in their sockets; all the bones of his face were sharp and projecting. Long fasting habitual mortification, and the chagrin which perpetual disputation occasions, had given an air of gloominess to his countenance, which accorded but ill with his boast, that his cell to him was like an arbour in the garden of Eden. In conformity with his own maxims, that cleanliness of body is uncleanliness of soul, and that an unwashed skin is preferable to frequent ablutions, Jerome’s person exhibited proofs of his utter disregard of Christ’s precept, “but thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head and wash they face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto they Father which is in secret.” He was discouloured with dust and ashes, and the Pharisee of old was not more ostentatious of his cleanliness than was our recluse of his sordid apparel and dirty exterior.
. . . .
After the first salutations were over, Vigilantius was given to understand that he ought to lose no time in adoring the holy relics, which the highly favoured village offered to his notice, and he observed that the monk scarcely uttered a sentence, or gave him a direction without making the sign of the cross. {*}
Quote ID: 8172
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 248
Section: 2E2
When Crates, the rich Theban, went to Athens to learn philosophy, he flung away all his gold, because he thought that he could not be rich and virtuous at the same time. Shall we then imagine that we can follow the poor and lowly Jesus, whilst we are encumbered with gold; and and under the pretext of alms-giving shall we cling to our wealth; and shall we think to dispense faithfully what belongs to another, when we cautiously reserve to ourselves our own?’Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Where did this quote come from? Heir. Op. 4. p. 563-6.?
Quote ID: 7225
Time Periods: 0
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 253
Section: 2E2
Vigilantius knew well that Jerome never failed to repeat the appointed hymns or prayers at canonical hours: at daybreak, and evening, as well as at the third, sixth, and ninth hours; that he rose two or three times during the night to pray, and that he would neither touch a morsel of food, nor go out of, nor return into, his cell, without repeating his prayer; {‡} and yet he could not perceive in Jerome either “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, or meekness.” These are “the fruits of the Spirit,” and the failure of them, when they were expected to be the production of excessive attention to burdensome Church ordinances, and to stated forms and hours of devotion, which wearied rather than strengthened the soul, exposed the defectiveness of the system.
Quote ID: 7227
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 254/255
Section: 2E2
Another controversial writer had given offence to our great advocate of continency, by arguing, that the Virgin Mary had borne children to Joseph after the birth of Christ. ‘Blasphemer’ - ‘blinded with fury’ - ‘madman’ - ‘most ignorant and stupid of men’ - ‘detractor and liar’ - ‘doglike calumniator,’ these were a few of the select phrases, which Jerome did not hesitate to apply to him in vindication of the perpetual virginity of the mother of Jesus. {*}[Footnote *] See Liber adversus Helvidium. Hier. Op. 4. p. ii. p. 129.
Quote ID: 7228
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 255/256
Section: 2E2
He thinks that if such devotion were the devotion of the heart, it would have a corresponding influence on the character and conversation; and when he sees contrary results, he pronounces it to be nothing but that lip-service, which is unacceptable to God; and he judges of its general tendency by the effects produced on the individuals, with whom he is most familiar. It is impossible not to remark, in the history of Vigilantius, that he began to declare himself against the ecclesiastical system, which distinguished this period, very soon after his visit to Jerome, having failed to do so with the same openness and emphasis, during his familiar intercourse with Sulpicius and Paulinus.. . . .
While St. Paul was a Pharisee, and partook of the harshness and bigotry of that sect, he was fierce and unrelenting, but when he embraced the Gospel and understood its true spirit, he became pre-eminent for benevolence. He was gentle among his converts “as a nurse cherisheth her children.” (1 Thess. ii. 7.) He besought them “by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.” How unlike to St. Paul’s was the unhallowed and intemperate zeal of Jerome!
Quote ID: 7229
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 259/260/261
Section: 2E2
Jerome. There are many mistakes about David in consequence of a misconstruction of Scripture. The history of Abishag, the fair damsel, the young virgin who cherished the king and ministered to him, is totally misunderstood.. . . .
The word Abishag is to be understood sacramentally, and indicates superior wisdom of old men. It signifies that wisdom which is peculiarly great in aged men. {*} It was wisdom which David embraced, and which cherished him, and not literally a fair young damsel.
Pastor John notes: John’s note: Wow!
Christ a virgin and Mary a virgin commended the principle of virginity to both sexes. {*} The Apostles were virgins, or were celibates after marriage. Bishops, priests, and deacons are elected because they are virgins or widowers; or certainly it is understood that after being ordained to the priesthood, they are always to remain celibates. Why are we to deceive ourselves or to be disappointed? if we enjoy the pleasures of matrimony, are we to expect to reap the rewards of continency? {ᾠ}
. . . .
According to my judgment we must follow either Lazarus or the rich man.’ {*} ‘But I do not condemn either nuptials or conjugal union; and that you may know my real opinion, I tell you that I would advise every body to marry, who is afraid to sleep alone.’ {ᾠ}
It was thus that Jerome, aware of the inconsistency of his own reasoning, by perversion or straining of scripture, by a paradox or a sorry joke, attempted to make a good case out of a bad one.
Quote ID: 7230
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 276/277
Section: 2E2
But many things that he witnessed there tended to make him question the wisdom and expediency of a system, which seemed to sour the spirit more and more, to render men and women insensible to all the social duties of life, to extinguish human sympathy, and to harden hearts against natural affection. For example; the praise of Paula, mother of Eustochium, and impiously called by Jerome, the mother-in-law of God, {*} who had shut up her bosom against the feelings of a parent, was a favorite topic with the monks and sisterhood of Bethlehem. Paula had immortalized herself in their eyes, {ᾠ} by saying farewell for ever to her children, without shedding a tear, or betraying the least emotion. The passage in Jerome, which describes this scene, is thought to be one of considerable beauty. It is poetical and dramatic, but the condition of mind which it pourtrays is well described by the apostle, - “without natural affection.”. . . .
He saw in the occurrences which I am about to notice, which were still matters of discussion when he was in palestine, that the professed recluse was the last person to submit to ecclesiastical authority, when it was exercised against his inclination.
Quote ID: 7233
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 277/278
Section: 2E2
It does not clearly appear whether John, then bishop of Jerusalem, refused to admit Paulinianus to the priesthood; but it is certain that Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, ordained him, and thus gave offence to the prelate into whose diocese the irregularly-ordained priest was to be intruded. In aggravation of this uncanonical proceeding, Paulinianus himself was unwilling to be thus thrust into the priesthood; he pleaded his unfitness for the sacred office, and when he would have have solemnly repeated his remonstrance at the altar, his mouth was stopped, and after his ordination he was forcibly led to the priest’s stall, and compelled to take his seat there. Here then we have a priest ordained without his own free consent, ordained without a parochial charge, receiving imposition of hands from a bishop who had no authority to ordain him to to a monastery at Bethlehem. Implicated in all these proceedings was Jerome.Pastor John notes:
Quote ID: 7234
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 291
Section: 2E2
The author, whom I have just cited Tillemont, with all his tenderness for Jerome, speaks thus of the quarrel between our monk and his antagonists, “It is provoking that St. Jerome himself acknowledges that he separated himself from the communion of his bishop, without knowing if he were culpable, without any judgment having been pronounced against him, and on a mere suspicion founded on an accusation made by St. Epiphanius, who, however holy he might be, did not always sufficiently consider what he did, and what he said. And he acted afterwards, with regard to St. John Chrysostom, nearly in the same manner in which he had acted towards John of Jerusalem. {*}[Footnote *] Tillemont, tom. xxi. p. 185.
Quote ID: 7236
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 324
Section: 2E2
Some years before, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, had complained that the secluded parts of his patriarchate contained clergy who refused on the plea of ancient custom to submit to the yoke of celibacy. {*} The treatise against Vigilantius, written by Jerome in 406, contains this apostrophe, so remarkable for its extravagance and exaggeration.‘Shame upon them! He is said to have bishops the accomplices of his crime, if they can be called bishops who ordain none deacons but such as are married, and who will not give the sacraments of Christ unless they see the wives of the clergy pregnant, or that they have children crying in their mother’s arms.’ {ᾠ}
Quote ID: 7237
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 325/329/334
Section: 2E2
The advocates of Romish dogmas have often been forward in declaring that the heresies of Vigilantius were the seeds of subalpine nonconformity. In the ninth century it was put on record by Jonas of Orleans and Dungalus, that the false teaching of Vigilantius still found scholars ready to receive it in parts of the subalpine diocese of Claude, Bishop of Turin; {*} and both Jonas and Dungalus attribute the Iconoclastic proceedings of Claude to the example of Vigilantius.. . . .
This then was the exact course that Vigilantius would take in his journey across the Alps to the foot of the Pyrenees, and when he entered the pass he was in the midst of the valleys now called Perosa and Pragelas; and this road led him through places which have long been famous in Waldensian history, viz. Pignerol and Fenestrelle, on the Italian side of the Alps, and Briancon and Embrun, on the French side. Here are those mountain-recesses, where King Cottius found safety, when other chiefs were subdued by the power of pagan Rome; and here are the fastnesses where the people of God have since been sheltered from the tyranny of papal Rome.
. . . .
Whether the Gallic presbyter declaimed there on his way to Aquitain, or in the course of his visits to the Alpine churches at some subsequent period, there is reason to believe that he went among them, expecting to find persons who help opinions similar to his own: and Romish polemics have taken great pains to brand the doctrines since taught in these mountains with the name of the Vigilantian heresy.
But how long he remained in this province, on his way home, is a question to which we have no clue to guide us. We only know that he returned into his own country after the voyage and journey which took place in 397, and then devoted himself to the study of those subjects on which he and Jerome were at variance.
Quote ID: 7238
Time Periods: 457
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 367/368
Section: 2E2
Many of the laics, who were religiously disposed, but who had no spiritual guidance to keep them in the right way, separated themselves from their domestic and social ties, put away their wives, abandoned their children, and professing a new kind of abstinence, occasioned great scandal to the name of Christianity.
Quote ID: 7239
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 387
Section: 2E2
Riparius and Desiderius, two priests, who were officiating in parishes adjoining to that in which Vigilantius was residing, drew up an account of what was going on, and represented that the whole vicinity was in commotion; -that their own people were infected by the mischievous doctrines of the Reformer; - and that there were many who not only favoured him, but agreed with him in what they called his blasphemous declamations against the observances of Church.
Quote ID: 7243
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 425/426/427
Section: 2E2
But Jerome, instead of setting bounds to his fury, rushed into the very thick of falsehood and calumny, and adopted the same mode of attack which the heathen accusers practised against the early Christians. This has been the artifice of persecutors at all times: they attempt to stifle reformers by making them objects of abhorrence, and by imputing scandalous immorality to them.. . . .
But inasmuch as Jerome did not fortify his charges by one single explanatory testimony, we may pronounce them to be nothing more than the basest slander, and dismiss them with the indignant protest of Tertullian. ‘When others were accused, you demand in corroboration of the acts, the number of the perpetrators, the place, manner, time, accomplice, companions. In our case no precaution of this kind is taken, though it is equally right that whatever is asserted should be thoroughly sifted.’ {*}
. . . .
Two years before, one bishop only is mentioned, as acquiescing in opinion with the reformer on the subject of clerical celibacy and other innovations. That bishop, indeed, was his own diocesan, and very probably the exemplary Exuperius. But now we learn that many more had declared themselves in his favour. . . During the first three centuries no vows of continence had been exacted {ᾠ} as a condition of ordination. The ecclesiastical law, {‡} which constrained bishops, priests, and deacons to surrender their nuptial privileges, was not inserted among the inviolable papal decrees, until after the middle of the fourth century, although it must be admitted that it had previously become a custo? of the church, from the time of Cyprian, to denounce clerical marriages as impure and unholy.
Quote ID: 7244
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 429
Section: 2E2
Riparius and Desiderius, despairing of any opposition to him on the part of the Gallic bishops, implored Jerome to take up the matter, and to put down the troublesome reformer. The fact, of calling on a champion in the East to vindicate the cause of the corrupt church against its impugners in the West, is of itself a proof that Vigilantius and his doctrine were in favour from the Pyrenees to the Alps.
Quote ID: 7246
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 433/434
Section: 2E2
At the end of this paragraph, he argues that the veneration of the relics of Samuel, which had just been translated with so much solemnity by the emperor Arcadius from Palestine to Thrace, was not to be regarded as any adoration of Samuel. Vigilantius, wiser than he, denounced the custom, as one which was sure to lead to the superstition which Jerome disclaimed. The result has proved two things that Vigilantius had the eyes of his understanding opened, to see the tendency of the corruptions of the ecclesiastical system of the fourth century-. . . .
He utterly denied that such was the practice of the church. But the times arrived, first, when a council of the church, the second Council of Nice, ruled, that ‘the bones, ashes, blood, and sepulchres of the martyrs ought to be adored;’ and afterwards, when a council of still greater authority, the Council of Trent, pronounced, that the decrees of the relic-adoring and saint-worshipping synod of Nice were binding on all Christians.
Quote ID: 7247
Time Periods: 47
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 438
Section: 2E2
Jerome denied that candles were lighted in the day-time, during religious services, for the reasons assigned by Vigilantius: but assuredly the practice was becoming common, {*} and justified the warning voice of Vigilantius, who protested against adopting any customs of the kind in imitation of idolatrous worship.
Quote ID: 7248
Time Periods: 4
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 459
Section: 2E2
* I will state the case of Vigilantius, in the language of a writer who has shown him no favour. ‘He taught that those who reverenced relics were idolaters; that continence and celibacy were wrong, as leading to the worst scandals; that lighting candles in the churches during the day, in honour of martyrs, was wrong, as being a heathen rite; that apostles and martyrs had no presence at their tombs; that it was useless to pray for the dead; that it was better to keep wealth and practise habitual charity, than to strip one’s self of one’s property once for all, and that it was wrong to retire into the desert.’ (See ‘Church of the Fathers,’ p. 288.) The author proceeds to say, - ‘We know what Vigilantius (with Aerius and Jovinian) protested against, but not what he protested for.’
Quote ID: 7251
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 460
Section: 2E2
The author of Ancient Christianity observes, that Vigilantius does not appear to have understood the secret reasons for the errors he denounced, and that he knew not how to lay the axe to the root of the superstitions of his times, by insisting upon those great principles of Christianity, which when understood, exclude “these follies in a mass.”*Pastor John notes: John’s Note - His works are lost (or destroyed)!! We cannot know.
Quote ID: 7252
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 469
Section: 2E2
For this he was denounced as a heretic, ‘whose tongues ought to be cut out, and torn into morsels and shreds.’ And Jerome, not satisfied with this denunciation, urged the bishop of the diocese in which Vigilantius officiated, ‘to dash him in pieces with his apostolic rod, his rod of iron, and to deliver him for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved.’ There can be no doubt that Jerome desired to see the secular arm raised against the Gallic reformer, as it had been, a few years before, against the Priscillianists; for, in his letter to Riparius, he quoted several scriptural examples of death inflicted on the sacrilegious, and applied them to the case of Vigilantius.Pastor John notes: John’s note: Good grief!
Quote ID: 7255
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 469/470
Section: 2E2
The war had begun, between infallible authority and the right of religious inquiry -the exercise of reason, conscience, and faith. The argument rested no longer on the word of God, but on the will of the church, as interpreted by individuals, and on the production of miracles in support of their interpretation. Vigilantius was not to question the propriety of that which a dominant party in the church propounded. He was to be branded as a blasphemer, and to be delivered over to the secular arm for punishment, because he presumed to say that the practices of certain ecclesiastical leaders were more consistent with paganism than the gospel.. . . .
The result of Jerome’s attempt to silence and crush Vigilantius, by slandering him, and calling for his destruction, is not exactly known; for, in fact Jerome’s treatise against him is the last contemporaneous historical notice extant, and his fate is involved in mystery.
Quote ID: 7256
Time Periods: 5
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 480
Section: 2E2
To all appearance, the remonstrants who agreed with Vigilantius were silenced; and no wonder. Twenty years before, a law had been made by Theodosius the Great, by the advice of his more sober ecclesiastical counsellors, to prevent the exhumation of dead bodies, {ᾠ} and the translation of them from one place to another; and yet the influence of the cinerarii had become so great, that when Vigilantius was protesting against the abuses which grew out of relic-worship, almost the whole Christian population ‘from Palestine to Chalcedon,’ {‡}was engaged in accompanying the supposed remains of Samuel to their new place of deposit.
Quote ID: 7258
Time Periods: 45
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